CHENNAI: Four months have passed since the Supreme Court ordered the authorities to remove stray dogs from public places, but the menace continues unabated. Even the government hospitals are not spared by the ‘colonising canines’.
Sample this: It’s around 7 pm, the dark has slowly set in; a visitor is walking towards the canteen of the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH) after leaving his bike at the parking lot; from nowhere, a pack of dogs runs towards him, and starts following him, barking; panic-stricken, the man looks around only to find another group of dogs fighting nearby. Acknowledging the menace, Chennai Corporation officials said the dogs will be removed after the construction works of shelters are completed.
The issue is not limited to RGGH, as TNIE has seen packs of dogs roaming freely in several government hospitals. At Government Kasturba Gandhi Hospital for Women and Children in Triplicane, dogs have taken over the corridors leading to wards, and are even sitting close to patients.
“There are a lot of dogs on the campus, they bark at people entering the hospital campus at night. They freely roam close to the wards. At times, when they enter the wards, we chase them out,” said a worker at the Government Kasturba Gandhi Hospital for Women and Children.
At the Omandurar Medical College Hospital, a security guard said even after chasing the dogs away, they keep coming back.
Dr K Shantharam, dean, RGGGH, said, “Whenever we complain to the Chennai corporation, they come and remove them, but the dogs keep coming again. On Friday also, we raised the issue with the corporation. Since it was a holiday, they said they would come on a working day.”
An official at the Government Kasturba Gandhi Hospital for Women and Children said the corporation leaves them back on the campus after sterilisation and vaccination.
It was in November last that the Supreme Court ordered the government to remove the stray dogs after increasing incidences of dog-bite cases. The SC had said the stray dogs should be vaccinated, sterilised and relocated to shelters rather than releasing them back in the same place.
Speaking to TNIE, J Kamal Hussain, veterinary officer of Greater Chennai Corporation, said the civic body has not started removing the dogs yet. “The construction work of the shelters is going on, and it will take one more month to complete the work. We are constructing two shelters – one at Manali and the other at Perungudi – each with a capacity to accommodate 250 dogs. So, after its construction, we will remove aggressive dogs, terminally-ill ones and dogs in public places as per the court order. As of now, we have been releasing the dogs back in the same place after sterilisation and vaccination,” he added. He also said, as these two shelters will not be enough for accommodating all the stray dogs, NGOs have been invited to sign an MoU if they have space to house dogs.