Private or stray, Chennai dogs to get microchipped in two months
At a high-level meeting on Friday, the CM directed officials to conduct dog census in all municipal and corporation areas.
CHENNAI: Chief minister MK Stalin on Friday directed state authorities and the municipal heads to take necessary action to curtail the growing dog menace in Chennai and other parts of the state. At a high-level meeting on Friday, the CM directed officials to conduct dog census in all municipal and corporation areas.
He also urged the authorities to coordinate with the Animal Husbandry department and conduct extensive training for veterinarians to initiate animal birth control programmes.
Dogs in Chennai will get microchip implants within two months, a move aimed at discouraging owners from deserting their pet dogs on streets, which will eventually reduce man-dog conflicts, said Chennai Corporation sources.
On Wednesday, a resolution was passed in the council meeting to implant microchips along with collar tags in two lakh pet and stray dogs in the city.
It also stated the civic body is in the process of creating a special software and portal which will maintain a database of the dogs that are microchipped. The civic body is close to implementing the ITCOT-advised project at an estimated Rs 5.20 crore, said the GCC.
J Kamal Hussain, GCC veterinary officer, told DT NEXT that the final talks for the project are complete and a tender will be called in two or three days. The successful bidder will create two lakh microchips and 80 radio frequency identification (RFID) stick readers to scan the details, said Hussain. “We successfully ran a pilot version in which 6,000 stray dogs were microchipped and tagged,” he said.
The microchips will contain details like the dog’s name, age, sex, location, owner details and medical details, including vaccination and sterilisation status, said the veterinary officer. This will dissuade pet owners from abandoning their dogs as we can easily track them down from the details on the microchips, said Hussain.
Once the microchips and readers are ready, we will notify all dog owners and they can get the implantation done at government and private clinics; in the case of stray dogs, GCC will carry out the operation, he added.
