Under sustained attack for failing to check the dog menace in the city, SMC has finally woken up to address the problem. SMC Commissioner, Khawaja Farooq Renzu called scientists and Animal Husbandry doctors to discuss ways to curb the growing number of incidents of dog biting and to arrest the exponential growth in the dog population.

In the meeting, experts identified sterilization or Animal Birth Control (ABC) as the best method to contain the dog population. And to prevent the dog-bite victims from contracting rabies, the dogs, experts said, should be injected with the anti-rabies vaccine.

“This is the only scientific way to deal with this problem,” Renzu said. “We can’t just catch the dogs and throw them somewhere else”.

Going around the city with a gun and shooting every dog in sight, Renzu said, is also not an option for the SMC.

Dogs have become a nuisance in the city for some time now. Without a proper birth control in place, the canines have proliferated everywhere. They breed around mounds of filth, piled up near the overflowing trashbins put up by SMC across the city, likes mosquitoes in stagnant water.

When the city empties of people with the fall of the dusk, the canines take to the streets and rule them till the honking horns and hurrying feet take over again the next morning. They guard their kingdom of the night ferociously and anyone who dares enter their turf especially at ‘sensitive places’ like TRC ground, Dlagate and downtown city are made to run for their lives.

Though the proposed plan has generated some hope that the menace will finally be dealt with, a section of the people is shouting down the plan as a non-starter.