KARACHI: Though injury and disease have claimed the lives of many zoo animals over the past decade, there has been no effort on the part of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) to hire technical staff and make the zoo hospital functional, it emerged on Wednesday.

A visit to the facility showed that renovation of the quarantine, part of the hospital, which has been ongoing for about two years at an exorbitant cost of Rs20m, has been suspended while the hospital equipment is in a state of disuse.

The zoo staff on condition of anonymity told Dawn that it was almost nine years since an animal had been treated at the hospital and that too by a visiting vet.

Presently, the zoo with more than 800 mammals and birds has only one veterinarian and three zoologists, two of them hired on contract basis in recent years.

Top zoo officials, the director and the additional director, have no academic qualification in zoology or professional experience in animal care. Besides, there has been no move by the KMC to upgrade the status of animal-keepers who spend most of the time with animals.

The KMC hires both zoo-keepers and sweepers in grade one and their posts require no specific training or qualification except that they should be healthy individuals.

“There has been no new induction of zoo-keepers since 1997, though many have either retired, left the job or passed away. The other upsetting thing is that most zoo employees have been awaiting promotion for a long time,” revealed a zoo staff.

To support his point, he gave the example of a senior colleague, Karamat Masih, who recently retired as zoo-keeper in grade one after serving the facility for 30 years. Same was the case with Deen Mohammad, who retired as a gardener last year after 40 years of service.

According to sources, the KMC has no practice of providing technical training to its staff posted at facilities for captive animals. Two members of the zoo staff, however, received training in handling foot-and-mouth disease cases in May this year. The training was organised by the Food and Agriculture Organisation as part of a national project.

“This happened for the first time in decades. We want to learn and polish our skills. Unfortunately, there are no avenues,” another zoo official said.

In the absence of technical staff, lack of training and funding constraints, it’s not surprising that the zoo has failed to perform its basic purpose – conservation of wildlife species. With high mortality and injury rates, the zoo has no breeding programme for endangered species to boast of while many animals die after spending a solitary life.

“We don’t have the technical staff to run the health facility. Diseased and injured animals are treated in their cages since renovation of the quarantine isn’t complete yet,” said assistant director of the zoo Dr Aamir Ismail.

He refused to show the mortality data book of the zoo, arguing that “no zoo in the world would do so.”

Additional director zoo Syed Aqeel Tazeem Naqvi, who holds a foreign diploma in gardening, admitted that the zoo lacked technical staff and said that requests for the same had been made to the authorities.

“If technical staff is hired, given financial powers and a long tenure to serve, there is no reason that the zoo can’t show progress,” he said, adding that the relevant officials had also been informed about the need to make the hospital functional.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2015

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