No record of pets with Panchkula civic body

Ishrat S Banwait

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, April27

The Panchkula Municipal Corporation has no record of pet dogs in the city. Officials concerned informed that they cannot locate any record but as far as their memory serves, their registration has not been done for the past 10 years.

Each pet is supposed to be registered by its owner and must have a metal token indicating its registration number. The token must be attached to the collar. It is the job of the MC to ensure that these norms are followed.

According to Mayor Upinder Kaur Ahluwalia, the registration fee used to be Rs 510 per dog. “I have issued instructions to restart the registration process with the same fee structure and process for the time being”, she added. However, when she called the person concerned, Preet Mohinder, who sits at the Sector 4 office of the MC, he said he had been there for the past 10 years but had not come across a single registration since then.

The Executive Officer, Arvind Balyan, feigned ignorance and asked to contact the Mayor or Chief Sanitary Inspector (CSI) Sadhu Ram. The CSI said Preet Mohinder was too busy with the work of house tax and could not locate any previous records. Interestingly, the MC has also committed a blunder in the house tax calculation and lacks the past record of payment made by citizens.

Asccording to the bylaws, any dog found without the collar and token must be detained in a place set apart for the purpose. The dog will only be let off if the owner pays fine and gets it registered within a week. Municipal Commissioner Lalit Siwach was not available for comment.

Meanwhile, stray dogs too are not being sterilsed. The MC is yet to employ a contractor for the same as the previous one had stopped sterilisation in February due to non-payment. One more dog bite was reported today at the Civil Hospital in Sector 6.

Sector 9 residents live in fear

Residents of Sector 9 informed that the problem of stray dogs was severe in their area. There had been multiple dog-bite cases in the area in the past few months. Deepali Handa, a resident says, “Dogs are everywhere. They even climb up the roofs of cars.” She added that the residents in the area had shunned the nearby park for fear of dogs.