SRI LANKA: TWO EXTREMES IN A SMALL ISLAND

[Guest guest]

After 25 years in Sri Lanka, I'm still puzzled by the apparent kindness and

compassion we encounter in people and the extremely deceitful and cruel,

ignorant and corrupt we come accross also... and of course the many shades in

between. I love this country, otherwise I would not live here of course, but

after getting involved with animal welfare seven years ago, I still get

surprises, I would not have dreamed of. The last one I got when visiting our

lawyer few days back: He had met the Mayor of Kandy on our behalf and was told

by him, that the municipality will not agree to any kind of settlement with SOFA

(SAVE OUR FRIENDS ASSOCIATION). The background-story to this: One year ago the

KMC (Kandy Municipal Council) had set out on a terrible killing-spree, poisoning

360 dogs in five days, mostly sterilized and vaccinated dogs, inspite of a

court-order from May 3rd 2005, according to which the KMC must not obstruct the

ongoing dog-population-control-programme carried out by SOFA. We immediately

filed a contempt of court case and the KMC has been successful for almost one

year now to get the court-próceedings postponed again and again, the last trick

to win time was to offer a settlement and now finally the truth came out: no

settlement! and therefore the case will continue on 22nd of August.

But this is not the only surprise I got this week: after hearing from Sagarica

Rajakarunayake, a brave and consistent worker for animals, that the Health

Ministry is proposing to carry out dog-population-control through injections of

progesterone because surgical sterilization is not very easy to organize in

most of the rural areas, I phoned a friend, who is a doctor, to find out more

about the substance in use here and he did some research on this and called me

back with his findings: " Depo Provera " contains 150 mg Progesterone and for the

human use 1 ml is sufficient to prevent pregnancy for 6 months, which means the

dose for an average street-dog (10 kg) should be 0.2 ml. From the PHI of the

Central Province however I know, that Dr.Harischandra, the Director of Public

Health and Veterinary Services, who introduced the use of Depo Provera for

street-dogs in Sri Lanka and has already distributed it to many public health

workers, is instructing the PHIs to inject 0.7 ml., which of course doubles the

risk of the dog developing pyometra, which is already high even when the proper

dose is given. Unfortunately I did not know all this last year in Singapore when

Dr.Harischandra was posing as an advocate of humane solutions at the Asia for

Animals conference, otherwise I would not have listened quietly to his

presentation of a pilot-project carried out by him tn the Puttalam District in

the North West of Sri Lanka. In this pilot-project all street-dogs were given

the Anti-Rabies- Vaccination and all females were injected with " Depo Provera " ,

which of course eradicated rabies in the District and succesfully stabilised the

dog-population because hardly any one of these female dogs will be alive today.

I wonder whether he will come on stage in Madras again and I'm not sure what

qualifies him to become a participant in an Animal Welfare Conference, but I

suppose, his position makes some animal welfare activists think, that we cannot

get anywhere here against his opposition, so we should try to go along with him,

but what's the point of winning him as a partner in our efforts, if eventually

all the killing is being carried out under a " humane " cover instead of openly

and straight away with poison as before?

The third surprise within the same week: Even though the Presidency in Sri Lanka

is a very powerful position, which can bypass the democratic system and

Presidential Orders have to be obeyed, Mahinda Rajapakse's order to stop the

killing of dogs and to introduce humane and scientific methods instead, seems to

be totally ignored by the local authorities. The Mayor of Kandy said he does not

even know about such an order, which of course is a lie, but since it was not

made a circular, he did not have to aknowledge the receipt officially and can

pretend, not to know. The Deputy Director of the Health Ministry for the Central

Province does not deny, that he has received the order, but he says, that he

does not agree and therefore not cooperate. Actually the dog-catching-team of

his department had been handing over dogs to us for sterilization for several

weeks and he was aware of it, but never officialy gave his consent, that the

sterilized dogs can be returned to the same place where they have been caught.

When he finally received a complaint from the KMC (Kandy Municipal Council)

about dogs from the Central Province being sterilized in the KMC dog-pound,

which we use as a transit-home for strays passing through our ABC programme, he

asked us to come to his office and told us, that the team will not be allowed in

future to tell us where the dogs were caught because they catch in response to

complaints and he cannot believe us, that we could convince the people, that

they should accept the dogs back when they are sterilized and vaccinated. Even

the PHI was surprised when he heard his boss saying: let the people die of

rabies and then the President will understand, that without killing rabies

cannot be controlled, and even though he would have gladly continued to work

with us, he did not have the courage to go against the order of his superior. So

we had to stop accepting dogs from the team because if the place of origin is

not being given to us, we have no way of returning them to their proper place.

We do not know, what they do now with the dogs, which they catch, probably they

just release them elsewhere, which is so foolish and so cruel because many of

our street-dogs are actually owned dogs or community dogs, but through this

foolishness they become real strays now.

The point of my posting today is not, to say, that all our efforts are in vain

because neither the legal system nor the political system provide us a fair

platform to talk sense and get a hearing, but we have to be realistic and not

fall prey to any eye-wash. We'll continue to sterilize as many dogs as we can

catch with the little funding we have, but we have no way of getting anything

accross to our policy-makers, they keep us out of all the meetings anyway and

even those animal-welfare-organizations, which are being invited, are not

getting any real chance to participate in decisions as we could see recently

when the draft for a new rabies-act, which had been rejected by all the

animal-welfare-groups, was being submitted to Parliament. By preventing puppies

from being born and vaccinating dogs against rabies, at least we keep Kandy

rabies-free with less dogs around, the ones, which are still there, have more to

eat. We had been looking forward to the new policies, which have been promised

since quite some time now, hoping this will bring in more funds to carry out

sterilizations, but since now most of these funds will be spend on these

so-called " chemical sterilizations " , as they call it (I call it killing in

disguise), we continue to depend on the generousity of animal-lovers to carry on

this work. We thank everyone, who has helped so far and hope, that few more will

join hands because there is much more to be done here even though Kandy is a

small town... but people keep dumping dogs and the only way to reduce the

numbers, is to offer free sterilizations in field-clinics to provide easy

access.

Please contact us for further informations.

Padma (Treasurer of SOFA)

 

 

[Guest guest]

Dear Padma,

 

I truly, truly wish I could help but we are in such a difficult position

ourselves as far as the Blue Cross is concerned. We are carrying out the

ABC -AR programme not only in Madras but in the districts around here and we

are stretched to the very limit. With seven full time vets on our payroll,

seven ambulances and drivers, 20 dog catchers and the shelter staff, you can

imagine our difficulty in even meeting our expenses and we have over a 1000

animals in our four shelters at any time, so you can see how concerned we

are about making sure they are looked after.

 

After 42 years, we have no corpus fund since we keep expanding our services

to the extent of the available funds.

 

We cannot afford to slow down because if they go back to killing, we can

never hope to stop them again.

 

We have the same dichotomy in India that you have described in Sri Lanka -

and we are so much larger so we have more problems....

 

As I tell everybody, when the way is long and the path is difficult, success

is often just staying on the road.

 

S. Chinny Krishna

Blue Cross of India

Padma [padmaeva]

Saturday, August 12, 2006 11:32 PM

aapn

Cc: animal_net

SRI LANKA: TWO EXTREMES IN A SMALL ISLAND

 

 

After 25 years in Sri Lanka, I'm still puzzled by the apparent kindness

and compassion we encounter in people and the extremely deceitful and cruel,

ignorant and corrupt we come accross also... and of course the many shades

in between. I love this country, otherwise I would not live here of course,

but after getting involved with animal welfare seven years ago, I still get

surprises, I would not have dreamed of. The last one I got when visiting our

lawyer few days back: He had met the Mayor of Kandy on our behalf and was

told by him, that the municipality will not agree to any kind of settlement

with SOFA (SAVE OUR FRIENDS ASSOCIATION). The background-story to this: One

year ago the KMC (Kandy Municipal Council) had set out on a terrible

killing-spree, poisoning 360 dogs in five days, mostly sterilized and

vaccinated dogs, inspite of a court-order from May 3rd 2005, according to

which the KMC must not obstruct the ongoing dog-population-control-programme

carried out by SOFA. We immediately filed a contempt of court case and the

KMC has been successful for almost one year now to get the court-próceedings

postponed again and again, the last trick to win time was to offer a

settlement and now finally the truth came out: no settlement! and therefore

the case will continue on 22nd of August.

But this is not the only surprise I got this week: after hearing from

Sagarica Rajakarunayake, a brave and consistent worker for animals, that the

Health Ministry is proposing to carry out dog-population-control through

injections of progesterone because surgical sterilization is not very easy

to organize in most of the rural areas, I phoned a friend, who is a doctor,

to find out more about the substance in use here and he did some research on

this and called me back with his findings: " Depo Provera " contains 150 mg

Progesterone and for the human use 1 ml is sufficient to prevent pregnancy

for 6 months, which means the dose for an average street-dog (10 kg) should

be 0.2 ml. From the PHI of the Central Province however I know, that

Dr.Harischandra, the Director of Public Health and Veterinary Services, who

introduced the use of Depo Provera for street-dogs in Sri Lanka and has

already distributed it to many public health workers, is instructing the

PHIs to inject 0.7 ml., which of course doubles the risk of the dog

developing pyometra, which is already high even when the proper dose is

given. Unfortunately I did not know all this last year in Singapore when

Dr.Harischandra was posing as an advocate of humane solutions at the Asia

for Animals conference, otherwise I would not have listened quietly to his

presentation of a pilot-project carried out by him tn the Puttalam District

in the North West of Sri Lanka. In this pilot-project all street-dogs were

given the Anti-Rabies- Vaccination and all females were injected with " Depo

Provera " , which of course eradicated rabies in the District and succesfully

stabilised the dog-population because hardly any one of these female dogs

will be alive today. I wonder whether he will come on stage in Madras again

and I'm not sure what qualifies him to become a participant in an Animal

Welfare Conference, but I suppose, his position makes some animal welfare

activists think, that we cannot get anywhere here against his opposition, so

we should try to go along with him, but what's the point of winning him as a

partner in our efforts, if eventually all the killing is being carried out

under a " humane " cover instead of openly and straight away with poison as

before?

The third surprise within the same week: Even though the Presidency in Sri

Lanka is a very powerful position, which can bypass the democratic system

and Presidential Orders have to be obeyed, Mahinda Rajapakse's order to stop

the killing of dogs and to introduce humane and scientific methods instead,

seems to be totally ignored by the local authorities. The Mayor of Kandy

said he does not even know about such an order, which of course is a lie,

but since it was not made a circular, he did not have to aknowledge the

receipt officially and can pretend, not to know. The Deputy Director of the

Health Ministry for the Central Province does not deny, that he has received

the order, but he says, that he does not agree and therefore not cooperate.

Actually the dog-catching-team of his department had been handing over dogs

to us for sterilization for several weeks and he was aware of it, but never

officialy gave his consent, that the sterilized dogs can be returned to the

same place where they have been caught. When he finally received a complaint

from the KMC (Kandy Municipal Council) about dogs from the Central Province

being sterilized in the KMC dog-pound, which we use as a transit-home for

strays passing through our ABC programme, he asked us to come to his office

and told us, that the team will not be allowed in future to tell us where

the dogs were caught because they catch in response to complaints and he

cannot believe us, that we could convince the people, that they should

accept the dogs back when they are sterilized and vaccinated. Even the PHI

was surprised when he heard his boss saying: let the people die of rabies

and then the President will understand, that without killing rabies cannot

be controlled, and even though he would have gladly continued to work with

us, he did not have the courage to go against the order of his superior. So

we had to stop accepting dogs from the team because if the place of origin

is not being given to us, we have no way of returning them to their proper

place. We do not know, what they do now with the dogs, which they catch,

probably they just release them elsewhere, which is so foolish and so cruel

because many of our street-dogs are actually owned dogs or community dogs,

but through this foolishness they become real strays now.

The point of my posting today is not, to say, that all our efforts are in

vain because neither the legal system nor the political system provide us a

fair platform to talk sense and get a hearing, but we have to be realistic

and not fall prey to any eye-wash. We'll continue to sterilize as many dogs

as we can catch with the little funding we have, but we have no way of

getting anything accross to our policy-makers, they keep us out of all the

meetings anyway and even those animal-welfare-organizations, which are being

invited, are not getting any real chance to participate in decisions as we

could see recently when the draft for a new rabies-act, which had been

rejected by all the animal-welfare-groups, was being submitted to

Parliament. By preventing puppies from being born and vaccinating dogs

against rabies, at least we keep Kandy rabies-free with less dogs around,

the ones, which are still there, have more to eat. We had been looking

forward to the new policies, which have been promised since quite some time

now, hoping this will bring in more funds to carry out sterilizations, but

since now most of these funds will be spend on these so-called " chemical

sterilizations " , as they call it (I call it killing in disguise), we

continue to depend on the generousity of animal-lovers to carry on this

work. We thank everyone, who has helped so far and hope, that few more will

join hands because there is much more to be done here even though Kandy is a

small town... but people keep dumping dogs and the only way to reduce the

numbers, is to offer free sterilizations in field-clinics to provide easy

access.

Please contact us for further informations.

Padma (Treasurer of SOFA)