ISLAMABAD - The Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad has asked the Capital Development Authority to formulate a comprehensive policy about stray dogs and start ‘Shelter and Vaccination Project’ in line with a direction given by the Islamabad High Court last year.
In June 2020, the IHC had stopped the CDA and the MCI from shooting and poisoning stray dogs and ordered the civic bodies to devise a policy to neutralise stray dogs.
Before the IHC’s verdict, staff of the Sanitation Directorate of the CDA would either use shotguns or poison to kill stray dogs in the residential areas of Islamabad on the pretext that they are a nuisance and health risk to citizens. However, there was no serious effort from the city managers on the subject besides clear directions from the court.
Now, the Additional Director of Emergency and Disaster Management wrote to the high ups of the CDA to deal with the matter with seriousness and formulate a comprehensive policy in this regard.
“The Administrator, MCI has desired a shelter and vaccination project for the stray dogs, keeping in view the directions of the IHC,” the letter reads, adding; “The stray dogs shelter and vaccination project may be designed in an orderly manner, addressing resources, assets, space, devices, surveillance-mechanism, breed control methods, starting from their area to area capturing to the retention and subsequent vaccination etc., within the given guidelines by the honourable court.”
The letter stated further that the stakeholders, in this regard are already doing a great deal of job within Islamabad by establishing such peripheries and boundaries on a volunteer basis.
It is suggested that the same model can be replicated in a refined and much more feasible manner under Sanitation Directorate, being a custodian of the stray dogs theme since the creation of CDA.
It is also conveyed that the shelter and vaccination project should be initiated on priority bases due to a serious apprehension of the residents of ICT.
The petition against poisoning and shooting stray dogs was filed by Advocate Saira Mehreen Abbasi in which she had pleaded that it was the responsibility of the wildlife board to ensure and take appropriate measures to “enforce the provisions of the Wildlife Ordinance 1979 and the Act of 1890 so that no animal is treated in a manner that subjects it to unnecessary pain and suffering.”
When contacted, Director of Public Relations CDA Syed Asif Shah said that a joint committee of CDA, MCI and IWMB have been formed, which is deliberating upon the subject and soon a comprehensive policy would be formulated.