Though donkeys may be ‘categorised’ as “beast of burden”, using them to carry loads of construction material up the new multi-storied OPD block of the associated hospital of Government Doon Medical College (GDMC) in Dehradun has elicited strong criticism from animal rights activists and animal lovers in the city. When The Pioneer correspondent visited the under construction building on the eve of its foundation stone unveiling, the masons and labourers were seen using about four donkeys to haul sacks of sand and similar building material up the steps of the five-storied building. Though the stair case has a safety railing built along the open side of the steps, this does not make the task of the donkeys easier with each seen carrying an estimated 50 kilogrammes load up the stairs. Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) co-opted member and animal rights activist Gauri Maulekhi strongly condemned the practice of using donkeys to carry loads up multi-storied buildings under construction. Terming it a cruel and dangerous treatment of the animals, she also pointed out that human labourers should have been employed for the job instead which would also have benefited the public directly with more people earning money for their labour instead of the owner of the suffering donkeys. Such treatment of donkeys has come to light in Dehradun earlier too when two donkeys fell to their death while hauling loads up under-construction multi-storied buildings along Rajpur Road. It is disappointing and questionable that such a practice is being carried out in the construction of a Government building intended to provide treatment and relief to the ailing and injured public in Dehradun, she added.
Animal rights activists in Dehradun state that there are conditions set for utilisation of animals for carrying load with a limit set for the load per animal and provision made for ensuring the use of only healthy animals not suffering from injury or other health problems. However, the physical attributes of the donkey are such that it may carry load up a slope without much problem but climbing up stairs even with comparably less load is considerably more difficult for the donkey and amounts to animal cruelty, said PFA Uttarakhand volunteer Ankit Jain.
