Stray dog menace haunts Nellore

Nellore: The stray dogs here are giving a nightmarish experience to children and elderly. They sometimes chase school-going children and attack severely leaving the residents in a panic situation. This is a common plight of majority parents who sent their kids to schools daily.

In fact, these stray dogs have been creating trepidation among denizens in many areas. Some packs of dogs move from one street to another street and attack strangers during night time.

Even though packs of stray dogs were giving terrifying experience to the city population, there have been no sincere action from civic authorities to curb the menace. Majority areas that fall under Podalakur Road and others witness such situation frequently and recently dogs attacked three children on Friday at Vengalarao Nagar.

“This is common problem in the entire city where majority people rear these dogs offering food. They stay in the streets and attack strangers even during day time as civic body has been showing mercy on them. We feel very afraid of these dogs during night when we travel to home from bus or railway station by walk and have to inevitably engage an auto or cab,” said V Vijaya, a teacher from Padmavathi School area.

She added that the problem intensifies during the upcoming winter season with the breeding season of canines. Venkateswara Puram, Ranganayakulapet, Padmavathi Centre in Podalakur Road, ZP Colony, SP Bungalow centre, Badwadipalem, Mulapet, Venkatareddy Nagar, Jyothinagar, Vengalrao Nagar, Vedayapalem Railway Station area, BV Nagar and many areas were facing this problem.

A section of people fumes over animal protection groups that were minting money through welfare activity. They question what would be the situation if any infected dog attacks their kid. “Animal protection wings are in contact with the civic bodies and were responsible for increasing rabies cases in and around city by protecting them.

They should be sued for any deaths due to rabies or any other severe infections because there should be control mechanism of street dogs. Without considering difficulties of local people, how they get money from civic bodies for welfare leaving population to their fate,” angrily asked P Ramanamma from Vengalraonagar area.

A volunteer from a non-government organisation, Mary, said there have been around 1,000 dog bite cases every year officially being registered at government hospitals in the district and the number of dogs would be around 40,000-50,000 in Nellore city alone.

Mary admitted that they were assisting poor families for getting vaccination in the government hospital as they cannot allocate time for treatment. Further, an official from health wing of Municipal Corporation said the menace has been rampant in many areas and action has to be initiated as they were busy with other activity.