'Locals came in way of culling'

Statesman News Service

MALDA, Dec 21: The district animal resources development (ARD) officials fear that some birds would be left unculled in the Bird Flu affected zone even after the culling and mopping operation, principally due to non cooperation of the locals.

The ARD officials are facing difficulties to complete the culling and mopping operations within the stipulated time in the English Bazaar and the Old Malda block areas due to the resistance of the villagers. Besides, the department does not have the required equipment to trap the backyard chickens. Lack of coordination with other departments also seems to be affecting the operation. In course of the moping up operations, the ARD officials found that many birds were kept away from the glare of the mopping workers in the 13 moujas under the English Bazaar block.

The mopping teams succeeded in slaughtering 257 chickens till late last evening. Today, they found that many birds were roaming about the areas. The district administration claimed to have culled a total of 20,875 birds during the culling operation in 13 moujas of English Bazaar block.

At Babupur village where ARD officials could not trap a single bird yesterday due to the resistance by a group of women, they managed to kill 25 backyard chickens today. At Babupur, when ARD officials trapped a few birds a group of women chased the officials and snatched the trapped birds form them yesterday. The ARD officials had to leave the area in the face of the stiff resistance.

“Mopping job has proved more difficult than culling due to lack of equipment. Though it was decided that forest officials would extend cooperation to trap birds with the help of a net, no such equipment has been supplied to trap backyard chicken”, complained a supervisor of the mopping teams.

According to him, the villagers did not hand over all the birds to the culling team members. “Almost every family has kept two to three birds at their home kept secretly and those birds will be left out after the end of mopping in the affected areas,” he said.

The Malda district magistrate Mr Sridhar Ghosh admitted the problem being posed by the local resistance and asked the officials not to slacken the culling and mopping work in the face of resistance.

Expressing satisfaction over the culling operations, the state health observer, Dr Gopal Chandra Chakraborty said that the lapses would be covered up during the mopping. The ARD officials may begin mopping in Old Malda from tomorrow. Mopping would continue in English Bazaar tomorrow. The total sanitation and disinfection work would have to be completed by 25 December.