Salem District Collector K. Elambahavath on Thursday (June 11) announced that 3-5 staff in every local body will be trained to catch dogs.

In a release, he said that a review meeting was held with officials from the Salem Corporation, municipalities, town panchayats, village panchayats, Animal Husbandry Department and NGOs recently regarding sterilisation and anti-rabies vaccination of community dogs.

A local monitoring committee and euthanasia committee would be established to control the number of community dogs. Corporation officials should ensure that dog owners have licence to keep their pets. Women’s self-help group meetings and grama sabha meetings would discuss matters regarding owning and vaccination of dogs. 

Steps would be taken to strengthen the infrastructure to shelter dogs after sterilisation in animal birth control centres within the corporation, municipalities and town panchayats.

To sterilise community dogs, local bodies would allocate a vehicle. The dogs should only be captured using a butterfly net.

Instructions were given to the officials of the corporation, municipalities, town panchayats and village panchayats to coordinate with one another, Mr. Elambahavath added.