Two months on, new monkey catchers yet to join south corp
NEW DELHI: The South Delhi Municipal Corporation’s (SDMC’S) attempts to control the monkey menace in city has fallen flat as none of the eight persons hired in October to catch the animals have taken charge to date.
An SDMC official said that despite offering lucrative rates, these animal catchers are either reluctant to come to Delhi or they leave after some time.
The body has just two catchers on its rolls at present.
SDMC veterinary director RS Tyagi said, “It’s been a month now and none of the shortlisted candidate have joined work. When contacted, they gave different reasons for not appearing. If the situation continues like this for another week, then we will issue a fresh public notice in December inviting other people to apply.”
Officials said that most catchers come from Agra, Barabanki and other neighbouring districts in Uttar Pradesh. “It might be that those who left the job with certain bad experience shared the same with the new people and dissuaded them from joining,” said Tyagi.
A “bad experience” here could be the FIRS filed against them by certain people over animal cruelty.
“These catchers are mostly poor, illiterate workers and can’t deal with court cases or the police. Also, some people often ask them to catch the simians in group and not individually, which is next to impossible,” said a senior SDMC official.
Faiyaz Ahmed Khudsar, scientist-in-charge of the Yamuna Biodiversity Park, however, said that the resistance comes due to inappropriate method adopted for catching animals.
“Animals often get violent after seeing the iron cage,” he said. “Also, the agencies concerned have no long term plan for keeping these simians after catching them. The least they do is to ask people to not feed these monkeys to minimise their breeding.”
In the last two to three years, the civic agency claimed to have spend lakhs on pan-india advertisements to hire monkey catchers and even sought help from neighbouring states. It had even doubled the catching rate from ₹1,200 to ₹2,400 per monkey, and even wrote to the Delhi Government’s wildlife department to provide training to a few of its own employees for catching the animals.
“But we failed to get any reply to our letters. Finally, three months back, some monkey catchers showed interest in doing the job and eight were shortlisted after interaction with municipal staff,” said Tyagi.
The civic agency receives average 15- 20 complaints every day related to monkey menace or bite. “But with just two monkey catchers on roll, the SDMC is finding it hard to entertain residents’ complaints,” said a SDMC official.