Poor waste handling in Delhi providing food security for strays to grow: RWAs

Residents’ welfare associations (RWAs) pointed to easy access to food, particularly at open dhalaos outside shops at markets and construction sites, for ensuring food security and an increase in their numbers

New Delhi

A stray at a waste dump, scouring for food. (HT Archive)

Poor solid waste handling, including a lack of segregation, in the Capital is a likely chief reason for a rapid rise in Delhi’s stray dog population over the years, experts and residents’ associations said on Monday, after the Supreme Court ordered that dogs be removed from streets.

Residents’ welfare associations (RWAs) pointed to easy access to food, particularly at open bins (dhalaos) outside shops at markets and construction sites, for ensuring food security and an increase in their numbers.

Atul Goyal, who heads URJA, an apex body of over 2,500 RWAs in Delhi, said: “At most dhalaos, there are multiple dogs. A number of these rely on food and waste that end up here. We are also seeing a similar situation at markets, where improper disposal of waste, often dumped in the open, provides access to food and waste by-products.”

“We require segregation at source and food or wet waste needs to be composted, instead of dumping at dhalaos and landfills. We see the same thing with cattle, which often end up at dhalaos and feed on all sorts of waste there,” Goyal said.

Shiv Mehra, the president of the Maharani Bagh RWA, also pointed towards dhalaos in the area as a reason behind an increase in stray dog numbers. “These dhalaos are never clean. There is a steady supply of waste, including food, ending up there. Dogs often scavenge on food, including bones, and this provides them food security,” Mehra said.

A similar problem persists in Sarita Vihar.

Rajesh Verma, general secretary of the Pocket B Sarita Vihar RWA, said civic bodies are failing at their primary role of waste management. “This is a by-product of our waste management system. The dhalaos are feeding points for dogs and this supply will never stop, until we manage waste effectively,” Verma said.

Verma said that RWAs alone cannot manage dhalaos. “We have limited funds. It is the civic body’s job to ensure waste does not accumulate in the open,” he said.

A 2021 study in Bengaluru, carried out by Erasmus University College and Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, found that waste from bakeries and garbage piles was the chief cause for an increase in the dog population.

Bharati Chaturvedi, founder and director of the waste management NGO Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group, said the way most people dispose of their waste—mixed and at dhalaos—was a prime attraction for stray dogs. “Naturally, hungry urban dogs will go for the free food. If we want fewer strays, then one step is to compost our wet waste at home or in the colony, stopping this food source.”

Construction sites, a common sight in most neighbourhoods, are also a prime reason, acting as a food source, according to residents.

Delhi’s building bylaws mandate specific provisions for the safety, health, and welfare of labourers at construction sites, including drinking water, urinals, creches and canteens. However labourers often camp in the open or in make-shift tents, cooking food in the open. This tends to attract strays, who end up staying even after construction work is over, residents said.

Rejimon CK, founder of Dwarka Forum (an association of RWAs of Dwarka), said Dwarka has seen rapid construction in the past two decades, which have resulted in numerous construction sites acting as unchecked feeding points. “Sometimes, makeshift houses around construction sites become an unchecked point for feeding. When they leave, strays are left behind. Also, unchecked garbage heaps around the area is one of the major issues in stray cattle feeding problem.”

To be sure, the biggest problem has been the failure of MCD and NDMC to sterilise strays as required to under the law. Animal lovers, individually and collectively, have stepped in to fill the gap.