Jayakrishnan Vu
Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, August 29: They endure the bark and they suffer the bites, but they are the gritty people who rid the city’s streets and neighbourhoods of the ubiquitous stray dogs. It is no mean task to succeed as a dogcatcher, but those employed by the municipal bodies, including Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), are a set of skilled people sensitive to the life of dogs.
Narendra Parida, BMC’s head dogcatcher working with its Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme since 2008, has just completed 12 years catching stray dogs. He said he has been bitten by stray dogs about 15 times so far and shelled out about `50,000 of his hard-earned money towards the medical bills. Other dogcatchers with BMC and municipal bodies in other towns – Orissa’s civic bodies employ nearly 50 dogcatchers – have similar experiences.
Before the butterfly nets started being used to catch a dog since 2014, using a rope or a blow pipe had been a task dangerous both to the dogcatcher and the dog itself. While ropes and blow pipes often led to dogs getting life-threatening injuries, it was also easier for them to bite the dogcatcher during the catching process. Butterfly nets made the job easier, but many dogcatchers still get bitten.
“A dogcatcher’s life is full of dangers and always filled with anxiety due to the constant fear of dog bites and health problems caused because of close work with stray dogs,” said Poornachandra Kalyani, the only fulltime dogcatcher with BMC, who received the state’s best sanitation worker award from Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik two years ago.
Dr Bikash Das, the nodal officer of the BMC’s sterilization programme, said, “The programme would not have been successful without the valiant efforts of the dogcatchers. The city owes a lot to the dogcatchers for achieving the target of conducting about 400 sterilizations every month”.
BMC currently has just four dogcatchers, a number widely considered to be insufficient for the capital city’s flourishing dog numbers. Three of these dogcatchers are contractual employees who are paid just Rs 6,000 a month by way of remuneration.
“Our efforts are not recognized well by the authorities and the profession of dogcatchers has been looked down upon by the society. The corporation does not offer a health allowance or similar benefits to its contractual staff. Each time a dogcatcher gets bitten by a dog, they end up spending about Rs 1,200 for treatment,” said Parida.
Dogcatchers from across the state who are contractual employees may go on a strike within two months as their repeated pleas for regularization of jobs have yielded no results, said BMC sources.
