Yahoo – AFP,
9 Aug 2014
Stray dogs
sleep on an empty road during a one day general strike called
by the trade
unions in Siliguri on February 28, 2012 (AFP Photo/Diptendu Dutta)
|
New Delhi
(AFP) - Stray canines roaming the Indian capital may soon find themselves
attending police training school with civic authorities planning to turn the
animals into security dogs, reports said Saturday.
New Delhi
residents have long informally adopted some strays as watchdogs and fed them,
but this marks the first formal plan to turn them into municipal security dogs.
Delhi
authorities said they would enlist police animal trainers to work with the
strays and press the canines into service as guard dogs alongside a newly
formed "May I Help You?" city security force which aims to assist the
public and bolster safety.
Stray dogs
are seen inside the gates of
The Turf Club in Mumbai on February 1,
2012 (AFP
Photo/Indranil Mukherjee)
|
"Our
plan is to adopt these strays and train them as guard dogs" to work with
the public security force -- 40 officers have already been deployed with the
city planning to engage as many as 700, he added.
While some
stray dogs are friendly and docile, others are more menacing and there is a
high incidence of dog bites in India.
"This
initiative is meant to address two issues: take the strays off the streets,
thereby tackling the dog menace, and make the city safer for residents,"
added Shrivastava.
There are
no recent figures on the number of dogs in Delhi but a 2009 city survey put
them at more than 260,000.
The reports
did not say how many dogs would be used in the security scheme.
Dogs will
be fed and vaccinated under the plan, welcomed by animal rights activists.
"This
will engage the street dogs with society and also benefit people," Radha
Unnikrishnan, an animal rights activist, told the Hindustan Times.
A 2001 law
forbids killing the roaming dogs and the stray population has soared, feeding
on India's infamous mountains of street garbage as well as on scraps given to
them by residents. Hindus object to the killing of many types of animals.
Cities
across India already run sterilisation and vaccination programmes but an
estimated 20,000 people die each year from rabies infections in India, over a
third of the global total.
The stray
dog programme is the latest animal initiative in New Delhi.
A federal
minister earlier this month announced authorities were deploying 40
professional monkey impersonators in government buildings to frighten away
rhesus macaque monkeys which terrorise bureaucrats, invading offices, grabbing
files and snatching food.
The men
mimic sounds of langurs, which were used to chase away macaques around Delhi
for decades until authorities started enforcing two years ago a four-decade-old
wildlife law that bans keeping langurs in captivity.
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