Dog control budget hiked to Rs 2.5 crore

PUNE: Four persons — including two policemen — being bitten by a rabid dog on the city police commissionerate premises on Thursday seems to have prodded the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) into taking some action.
The civic administration is now considering concrete steps to curb dog bite and rabies cases. The focus will be on vaccinating the maximum number of the city’s street dogs against rabies.As per estimates, there are roughly 1 lakh street dogs in the city. A big shift has also been noticed in the budget allocated to the dog control programme. From a modest Rs 75 lakh earlier, the budget has gone up to Rs 2.50 crore this fiscal.
Recently, the officials initiated the tender process to appoint an agency to catch stray dogs, administer anti-rabies vaccines that are effective for three years and release the dogs in the same area from where they were picked up. This apart, the civic administration also wants to appoint more agencies for sterilization. “The tender process for the appointment of agencies has been initiated. Four agencies are expected to be appointed. The administration is expected to spend Rs 2.5 crore on both the tenders,” an official said.