PESHAWAR: An inquiry committee has held the top management at Peshawar Zoo responsible for the deaths of animals and birds, a local media outlet reported on Sunday.
An inquiry committee was created by the provincial government to investigation causes behind the alarming situation in Peshawar Zoo where many animals and birds have died in recent months.
“Project director zoo, admin officer, and vet officer are responsible for the death of animals due to poor operation mechanism,” read the report.
Environment Secretary Nazer Hussain Shah said that the report did not fix responsibility but that Chief Secretary Mohammad Azam Khan has ordered the inquiry report authors to fix responsibility.
One of the authors of the study said that there were many reasons behind the deaths. He explained that animals were exposed to the public without being acclimatised properly. He said that the authorities should have waited at least a year before opening it to visitors. An environment department official admitted that the decision to open the zoo was politically motivated. It was inaugurated by the former chief minister Pervez Khattak in 2017.
In addition to hundreds of birds and over a 100 animals, only 35 staff members have oversight as compared to the required staff of 250.
An environment department official warned that more animals will die if such a small number of employees continue to look after the animals and over 10,000 visitors each day. The Zoo, planned to open in December, 2018, but opened to public in February without proper staff. Rs 1.2 billion and Rs 300 million was allocated for the procurement of animals and birds.
Officials also complained about the methods used to create the zoo, with trees being chopped down and poor training provided to staff in handling the animals. Authorities have also been reluctant to share details about the number of deaths while media outlets have consistently reported deaths of several birds and animals in the past.
Bureaucratic red tape has also prevented these problems from being resolved.
