Vinay Moray from Bengaluru reminds you of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The founder trustee of Sarvodaya Sevabhavi Samstha, an NGO, Moray, along with his team of volunteers, sterilise and vaccinate street dogs. Moray has dedicated his life to bringing down the stray population in Bengaluru in a humane manner and has achieved remarkable success in that.
However, due to the delayed payments from Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike(BBMP), the NGO has been forced to limit its operations to just one zone—the East Zone—in the city. Moray says he has been struggling to pay salaries to the handlers, veterinary doctors and nurses involved in catching the dogs and sterilising them. Then there are medical and vaccination bills too.
Nonetheless, unlike the legendary piper who lured the rats away with his magic pipe and turned revengeful when he was denied the promised payment for his services, Moray manages to keep his cool. “My biggest concern is that this will cause an increase in the street dog population in the city. NGOs like CUPA, Vets for Animals and Animal Rights Fund were actively involved in sterilising street dogs. They have all given up due to the delay in releasing payments,'' laments Moray. Sarvodaya Sevabhavi Samstha is the only remaining NGO in the city that still takes up sterilsation projects.
Moray got some long pending payments from 2014 recently. Now BBMP owes him an amount of Rs 4 lakhs. “Bills from the last six months are being processed. They have been sent to the Joint Commissioner of the Bengaluru East Zone. Now he has to clear the payments,'' says Dr G. Anand, Joint Director, Animal Husbandry, BBMP, in response to our query on the inordinate in releasing the payments.
Many of these NGOs work on a shoestring budget, says Moray. "They can take care of dog sterilisation and post-operative care only if the payments are released monthly, as per the MOU with the BBMP,'' he says. “BBMP earmarked Rs 2.5 crore for the construction of Animal Birth Control centres but it still remains on paper. The end result of all these will be that the stray dog population will be uncontrollable,” he adds.
