RE: DOGS NOT YET SAFE IN SRI LANKA

[Guest guest]

All of us are solidly behind the wonderful animal welfare people of Sri

Lanka

who are fighting against such great odds to stop the senseless killing of

dogs.

 

Sadly, even in India, where we have so many success stories to prove that

killing does not work and a spay-vaccinate-and-return programme does, we

have

un-informed people trying to revert to killing.

 

S. Chinny Krishna

 

Padma [padmaeva]

Friday, July 21, 2006 2:22 AM

aapn

DOGS NOT YET SAFE IN SRI LANKA

 

 

After all these hopeful moves... the Health-Minister talking about humane

rabies prevention, the President giving an order to stop the killing of

dogs... we were all waiting for the implementation of the humane

alternatives and of course for a new rabies-act in order to ensure that the

law will protect the dogs from being killed once and for all. We were told

again and again, that a no-kill-policy will be followed in future, but

nothing was given in writing. However the word had transpired, that a new

rabies-act will soon be discussed in Parliament and we tried in vain to get

hold of the draft until last week finally Sagarika Rajakarunayake from

Satthva Mithuru was handed over a copy by the Health Ministry and it

confirmed what I had suspected for quite some time: the same old draft by

Shiva Obeysekara, which was rejected by all the animal welfare organizations

last year, is still being under consideration. In this draft it is clearly

said, that no dogs are allowed to remain unobserved and unleashed in public

places. Fact is: more than 50% of the Sri Lankan dogs live in public places,

some are community dogs, most are owned, but not restrained in their

movements. According to this draft, they all should be impounded and either

given over to animal-welfare-organizations or they must be killed.

Essentially this draft is not diffrent from the old law.

 

It looks as if we still have a long way to go, but we won't give up.

 

Padma (SAVE OUR FRIENDS ASSOCIATION)