No dogs for summit

The Foreign Ministry wants to establish a Dog-Free Zone at the BMICH -- the venue of the SAARC summit -- and the Viharamahadevi Park. Colombo Municipal Council workers, acting on a request made by Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama, began rounding up stray dogs in the area from yesterday.
The CMC’s chief veterinary Surgeon Dr. D. Illeperuma said the government policy was to vaccinate and sterilize stray dogs and let them live in their environment.

“Street dogs are a symbol of poverty. We are continuing with our policy of vaccinating and sterilizing these dogs. At present there are more than 3,300 stray dogs in the city and most of them are sterilized and vaccinated and we have allowed them to remain in the environment.

“It’s a difficult task to evacuate street dogs. Even if we remove all in one area another set of dogs would come to the same area but for the time being we are doing our best to take away the ones roaming near the summit venue,” he said.

Dr. Illeperuma said that twenty four dogs from areas around the BMICH had been taken to the CMC’s dog pound. He said the dogs were tagged and would be released in the same area after the summit.

He said dogs had destroyed newly-done flower beds in the Viharamahadevi Park which was revamped for the SAARC summit and therefore the dogs in the park too would be locked up until the end of the summit.