ISLAMABAD: The growing population of stray dogs and wild boars has perturbed the residents of the capital city who have sought Prime Minister Office’s directives to eliminate the animals.

Sources said 64 complaints had been registered with the recently-launched Pakistan Citizens Portal of the PM Office against stray dogs and wild boars.

The portal is an initiative of the PTI government to allow the citizens to register complaints regarding their basic problems for swift resolution.

The residents of Islamabad filed 64 complaints regarding stray dogs and pigs with the portal. The federal government has forwarded the complaints to the Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad (MCI) for early resolution.

The capital city has been facing the growing population of wild boars and stray dogs. One can easily find a pack of boars in different city areas. These wild animals are also causing road accidents, particularly at nights.

Officials of the CDA and MCI said a decade ago wild boars and stray dogs were not an issue as at that time locals and foreigners used to hunt them down. But later the capital administration imposed a ban on the use of weapons because of security issues.

“Killing wild boars is a violation of Wildlife Act so hunting of this animal is banned,” said an official of the capital administration who requested not to be named.

Sources in the CDA and MCI said complaints received from the Prime Minister Office had been forwarded to the concerned directorates for action.

When contacted, Director Sanitation Sardar Khan Zimri said the MCI had constituted two shooting teams which on an average eliminated 15 dogs daily.

He said special focus was being paid to the complaints referred from the Pakistan Citizen Portal.

“We are supposed to kill dogs only as far as wild boars are concerned our environment wing is responsible to take any decision on it,” he said, adding the city had witnessed an increasing population of stray dogs and wild boars for over a decade.

Director Environment Irfan Niazi told Dawn that according to the Wildlife Act, no one was allowed to kill wild boars. But the MCI can adopt chemical elimination of the wild animals.

He said in the past the civic agency used to poison wild boars but for over a decade this practice had been abandoned.

But shooting of stray dogs by the civic agency has been criticised by NGOs. Several officials of the MCI said instead of shooting the dogs the civic agency should adopt some scientific method to eliminate them.

Overall complaints

The sources said so far over 600 complaints had been referred to the CDA/MCI from the Citizen Portal and a majority of them were related to streetlights, most of which are currently non-functional in the city.

“We are attending all complaints being referred to us,” said an official of the MCI. He, however, said the MCI had been facing shortage of funds. “But within the available resources, we are trying to deliver the best,” he said.

Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2018