Jorhat, May 10: The Jorhat Municipal Board plans to sterilise stray dogs and administer anti-rabies vaccines to them from tomorrow.

The municipal board, which is launching the drive in collaboration with JBF (India) Trust, an NGO, is taking a cue from Chennai and Jaipur, the two rabies-free cities in the country. These two were the first cities in the country to launch animal birth control programmes.

The project was launched in Guwahati by Just Be Friends, an NGO, in 2009. It was the first such project in the Northeast. More than 7,000 dogs were operated under it.

“We will launch a similar drive in Sivasagar town in the next phase,” the managing trustee of JBF (India) Trust, Sashanka Sekhar Dutta, said. The NGO has signed an MoU with Jorhat Municipal Board and the department of veterinary and animal husbandry.

The aim of the project is to make Assam a rabies-free state on the lines of Sikkim, which is the only state in the country to be rabies free. The project is expected to be complete within 10 years.

Nearly 800 dogs had been identified in the town in a recent survey conducted by the NGO. “The veterinary department has made arrangements for us to set up a hospital at Baghchung, on the outskirts of the town, where the dogs will be operated upon and kept for at least a week before they are released from where they were captured,” Dutta said.

Municipal board chairman Prasanta Bora said the cost of operating upon each dog would be nearly Rs 1,500, fifty per cent of which will be borne by the board and the rest by the NGO. “We recently called a meeting of all hotel owners in the town and requested them to provide food for the dogs during the period they will be kept at the hospital,” Bora said.

“Our aim is to make Jorhat rabies-free on the lines of Chennai and Jaipur. We will need the support of the people of the town to carry out the drive,” he added.

B. Singh, a district administration official who is in charge of the project, said they have held meetings with police, especially the traffic department. “The help of the police will be important as there might be a traffic problem while trying to catch these stray dogs,” he said.

Dutta said the project personnel would first under go a training programme and then the actual operation would be done. “Our men will train the people involved in the project vis-à-vis how to catch stray dogs and how to handle them. It is not an easy job since most dogs may turn out to be aggressive.” Nripen Khound, a veterinary department official here, said such a drive was the need of the hour as Assam was one of the worst rabies-affected states in the country.