Pakistan is beginning to move towards a different way of managing its street dogs. Courts have challenged indiscriminate killing, and vaccination, sterilisation and humane population management are increasingly being put forward as alternatives.
But in Punjab, lethal control has not disappeared.
New reporting from Sargodha says Union Council secretaries have been assigned responsibility for the destruction of stray dogs in villages. The officials reportedly complained that they had been given the additional duty without a separate budget, staff or facilities and were having to meet some of the costs themselves.
The significance of the report is that destroying street dogs appears to remain an assigned function within part of Punjab’s local administration.
That sits uneasily alongside the direction Pakistan has begun to take elsewhere.
In May, the Islamabad High Court permanently prohibited poisoning, shooting and indiscriminate killing of stray dogs in Islamabad. Authorities were directed towards catch neuter vaccinate release, alongside measures intended to improve monitoring and accountability.
Pakistan’s federal government has also established a Committee on Cruelty to Animals, with humane management of stray animals among the issues being addressed. The government has acknowledged shortcomings in veterinary infrastructure, enforcement and monitoring and has sought information from the provinces about expanding vaccination and neutering.
These are important developments, but they do not automatically change what happens at local level.
Sargodha suggests that the old system remains in place in at least some parts of Punjab.
There are signs of the same thinking elsewhere in the province. Reporting from Khushab on 4 September says residents have called for dog killing teams to be activated. A day earlier, residents in Shujabad, Multan District, were also reported to be demanding the start of a dog killing campaign.
We are not suggesting that dogs are currently being killed in either Khushab or Shujabad on the basis of those reports. They show something different: killing remains an expected response to street dog populations and one that local authorities are still being asked to provide.
Sargodha is more concerning because the reporting goes beyond public demands. It describes responsibility for destroying dogs being allocated to local officials. That is the contradiction.
Pakistan cannot make a meaningful transition towards humane dog population management if vaccination and sterilisation are promoted at one level while killing remains an administrative task at another.
Nor is this simply a question of replacing one instruction with another. Moving away from lethal control requires functioning programmes: sufficient veterinary capacity, vaccination, sterilisation, population data, funding and clear responsibility for implementation.
Without those things, policy change on paper may never reach the dogs on the streets.
Pakistan remains Crisis on the Dog Desk Animal Action Global Stray Dog Crisis Map. We recognise the moves being made towards humane management. They are precisely why the latest evidence from Punjab matters.
If Pakistan is moving away from killing street dogs, we should be able to see that change at local level. In parts of Punjab, we cannot see it yet.