The Hindu : Karnataka / Mysore News : Stray pigs have not been moved to new facility, says MATF

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka - Mysore

Stray pigs have not been moved to new facility, says MATF

Staff Correspondent

Land meant for pig-sty is a dry lake

MYSORE: The Mysore Agenda Task Force (MATF) today exposed the claims of the Mysore City Corporation (MCC) that stray pigs have been shifted to a pig-sty outside the city.

The corporation had launched a drive on Tuesday to catch stray pigs within the city limits and announced that it will shift them to a place near K. Hemmananahalli on the outskirts of the city.

The corporation had said that special squads were constituted to capture the animals and shift them to the shelter.

Coverage

The corporation's drive against pig menace received a lot of coverage and was hailed as a step in the right direction to keep the city clean.

But when the task force and members of the media went to K. Hemmanahalli, there was neither a trace of the pigs nor any sign of a pig shelter in the locality. The visiting team discovered only a massive board of the pig-rearers' association at the spot.

Inquiries with people in the area revealed that the land where the pig shelter was supposed to have been constructed was a dry lake (Doddakere), and according to the law nobody could lay claim over the property and erect buildings on it. "No pigs have ever been released here," they said.

Meanwhile, task force members Lakshamana, H.A.B. Parpia, Maj. Gen. (retd) Sudhir Vombaktere, Ramesh, P.M. Bhat and others questioned the corporation authorities about the pigs rounded up in the city?

Questioned

"Where is the 50-member squad described as "experts" on whom the corporation is spending money to trap pigs and shift them to K. Hemmanahalli? How can all the pigs in the city be concentrated in a small area of less than five acres? Where are the facilities for pig rearers and why is it that the there is no fencing around the land meant for a pig shelter?"

The members of the action force have alleged that the corporation is misleading the public and taking the people for a ride.

The members also sought to know what the city corporation has done with the tax payers' money set aside for the drive and buildng the pig-stack.

Specialised task

Mr. Parpia pointed out that pig rearing is a specialised task that requires the help of veterinary experts to ensure that the animals do not spread diseases such as encephalitis to humans.

Setting up a pig-rearing centre requires very large investment and the corporation cannot demarcate a small portion and declare it as a rearing centre without providing the required facilities, he added.

It may be recalled that the Mayor, Dakshinamurthy, had announced during the drive that pig owners, who were initially reluctant to shift to the new area citing the absence of any facilities, had agreed to move out as they were given land outside the city.

It is reckoned that there are around 18,000 pigs in the city owned by pig rearers. The annual consumption of pork meat in the is around 10 lakh kg at a conservative estimate.

At Rs. 40 to Rs. 60 a kg, this works out to around Rs.6 crores and is hence a lucrative business. It is suspected that most pig-rearers have political backing and hence cannot resist the move to shift the facilities outside the city.

Attempts to contact the Corporation Commissioner were futile. Meanwhile, MATF members said they will urge the Chief Minister, N. Dharam Singh, to initiate action against the corporation for misleading the public.

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