Puri Municipality joins hand with Fisheries & ARD Department

The holy city, Puri is all set to host 50 lakh devotees for the Nabakalebara Rath Yatra. All agencies are involved in making this mega event a grand success.

Over 2000 stray animals are found in Puri town and around 500 of them move around Badadanda every day. The stray bulls often lock horns and sometimes pilgrims get hurt on the Badadanda and other places in the Pilgrim Town.

To provide a solution to the problems posed by the stray cattle population found moving around and causing much inconvenience to the traffic, Puri Municipality in collaboration with Veterinary Department has taken a noble step to relocate these stray animals to a kine house. This will bring relief to devotees as well as to the animals during Nabakalebara Rath Yatra.

The kine house is located on the outskirts of Puri town near Chaitana having 28 Acres of land to accommodate about 500 animals. One ‘Gaushala’ managed by Hariharananda Ashram is also available adjacent to the Kine house. The Ashram has evinced interest to rehabilitate stray bulls in their Gaushala. The basic facilities such as rest shed, drinking water, feed, fodder etc. are made available inside Gaushala and kine house.  The stray animals from Badananda and other places of Puri town are being captured by NGO namely “Thenga Bahini” engaged by Puri Municipality and brought to Kine house and Gaushala. Presently, 521 bulls are rehabilitated at Gaushala and 319 stray animals are kept at Kine house. Shri Debi Prasad Panda, Director AH & VS is constantly monitoring the arrangements. One Joint Director from Directorate, namely Dr. Manas Ranjan Mohapatra is stationed at Puri to supervise the work.

The Veterinary Department personnel are taking care of animals which are kept at Kine house and Gaushala. They are involved in controlling, feeding and providing health care services to these stray animals.

Hon’ble Minister Agriculture, Fishery and Animal Resources Development, Shri Pradeep Maharathy has visited the Kine House on 15th July, 2015 and appreciated the efforts of the veterinary department staff. He has also instructed to construct two more rest sheds for animals inside the kine house immediately.

Shri Bishnupada Sethi, Commissioner-cum-Secretary, F & ARD Department took a stock of the situation on 15th July, 2015. He has reviewed the arrangements made by Department. It has been reported by Chief District Veterinary Officer, Puri that 10 MTs Omfed cattle feed and 3 MTs of feed from local market have been procured for feeding these animals. Sixty quintals of green fodder collected from CIFA campus, Bhubaneswar along with 42 quintals of paddy straw is given to these animals. Fresh clean water is provided by constructing 3 water troughs inside the kine house. Two feeding troughs are constructed. Adequate medicines and vaccines are also kept in stock for treating any ailment. Veterinary Teams consisting of one Veterinary Doctor, one Livestock Inspector and one Attendant is stationed at Kinehouse round the clock in 3 shifts. Additional staff have been deployed from Khordha and Nayagarh District to assist in Veterinary Health care measures.

The efforts undertaken by Puri Municipality and Veterinary Department will certainly fulfill one of the many requirements needed to be addressed to make the visit of pilgrims safer and comfortable.