All hands on deck

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has rounded up 130-odd dogs from the Games Village in a drive that began on Thursday and continued till Friday. Neelam Pandey reports.

Their days of freedom are over.

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The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has rounded up 130-odd dogs from the Games Village in a drive that began on Thursday and continued till Friday.

Friendicoes SECA (Society for the Eradication of Cruelty to Animals) said they have temporarily relocated these dogs to a dog sterilization centre at Ghazipur. The civic agency will be carrying out similar drives at all the 17 Games venues.

According to a dog census, there are over 2.8 lakh stray dogs in Delhi. Keeping this in mind, the civic body has decided to permanently deploy 15 dogcatchers inside the Games Village during the Games.

Some MCD officials also said because of the heavy rains, some small snakes were also found inside the Village complex. They are roping in snake catchers now.

More than 75 tonne of construction waste alone was lifted and collected by the MCD staff in the past 48 hours.

The sanitation drive continued on Friday with the workers of the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) giving a helping hand to the MCD workers.

To ensure cleanliness was up to the mark, the Village was cleaned thrice — the MCD had deployed 500 sanitation workers and about 50 supervisory officials to co-ordinate the cleanliness works while the NDMC deployed 500 workers.

The MCD was assigned the job of cleaning the outside premises of the Village and the basements. The NDMC's job was to clean the inside area of the residential complexes and 34 tower blocks located in the Village.

The entire cleaning work was divided into three parts wherein one part was dedicated to cleaning the residential towers including the rooms, toilets, corridors and staircases.

"The other group was asked to clean the other surface areas of the residential blocks, the green area, and the third group was assigned the job of clearing construction waste and garbage from the residential blocks," said a senior NDMC official, wishing to remain anonymous.