Drinking water-holes get cleaned after a Year

Drinking water-holes get cleaned after a Year
Himanshu S Sahoo

BHUBANESWAR, JULY 8: After a gap of nearly one year, drinking ponds inside the enclosures at the Nandankanan Zoo were properly cleaned on Saturday on a war-footing, following the visit of veterinary experts and members of the health-team who suspected that bad quality of the water in the ponds in each of the tiger enclosures might have contributed to the spread of Trypanosoma, which took the lives of 12 felines.

Though the ponds are supposed to be cleaned by pumping out the existing water and filling them up with fresh water every week, the team found that the zoo authorities had neglected this duty. During the cleaning operations conducted six times during the last one year, the authorities had merely filled up the water-holes without pumping out the old water.

Zoo sources said during their visit, chief conservator of forests (Wildlife) S K Patnaik and a health-team member Dr S K Ray had directed an immediate cleaning of the ponds to prevent the spread of the epidemic. Meanwhile, the pump-house at the zoo was vacant with the electric-pump `missing' since the last one year. However, the zoo authorities maintained that the pump had been sent for repairs.

The authorities hired a pump on Saturday to comply with the experts' directions. Meanwhile, the class four employees have not taken kindly to the direction of cleaning the water-holes regularly and have threatened to launch an agitation against it.