ABC Kandy

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends,

 

although we have no great news to report, carry on our work quietly... dog by

dog, cat by cat... while the judge keeps postponing a decision, for whatever

reasons... he only knows. However we want to give our friends and supporters an

update on our finances and also on the work done. On and off we collect all the

receipts of the vets, who sterilize animals for us and add it all up: by 31st of

March we had paid for 8955 castrations (since Oct 2002), for April we haven't

paid all the bills yet, but with an average of 165 animals per month we must

have reached the figure 9100 at least by now and soon it will be 10 000...

thanks to some kind donors, who have given us a special grant to conduct more

camps in Kandy town (usually half of our sterilizations are being done in the

surroundings of Kandy, but for the next few months we hope to focus more on the

residential areas of the city). Approximately 70% of those castrations were

performed on female dogs, 15% on male dogs, 10% on female cats and 5% on male

cats, most of them belonging to the low-income group, while approximately one

third are community animals.

 

Besides birth-control, which is our main-focus, we also attend to old, sick and

injured animals and to abandoned kittens and puppies, which we try to re-home.

The ones, which cannot be re-homed, are being sheltered, some in the Municipal

dog-pound, which we use as a transit-home, many in the private homes of our

members (partly supported by SOFA, but mostly financed by those members

privately).

 

To cover all the expenses we received a total of 3 1/2 Mio. SL-Rs (approx. 35

000 $) in the previous year, out of which 1,3 Mio were spend on vet-fees (90%

for birth-control-surgeries, 10% for treatment of sick and injured animals), 1,2

Mio. were spend on food for the animals passing through our care, 3 lakhs were

paid as salaries to our workers, 2 1/2 lakhs we spent on drugs and vaccines, 2

1/2 lakhs for transport, two lakhs for new cages and other requisites. For this

year we are still hoping to secure the needed funds.

 

Ever since we took over the Municipal dog-pound under the condition, that no

dogs shall be killed in Kandy, we faced problems with the Municipal Vet, which

resulted in a court-case... the last resort we had to protect the dogs from

being killed again. (For details please refer to www.sofakandy.org) In the

meantime the Sri Lankan President has prohibited the killing of dogs, but

unfortunately no island-wide ABC has been initiated yet, therefore the

complaints about the rising dog-population are becoming louder by the day. In

some areas various groups have carried out ABC programmes for domestic pets and

some also covered community-dogs and -cats, and one of these programmes was

introduced as a pilot-project to the Health-Ministry with the hope, that the

Ministry will take it up as a model, but up to now we have not heard any

definite word. As far as a newspaper-article about this pilot-project reported,

the proposal is only for the domestic dogs, while the community dogs are still

being regarded as the responsibility of the animal-welfare-organisations, which

means at least 80% of the female dog-population will continue to breed, even if

the Government steps forward to offer free sterilizations for domestic pets,

because animal-welfare groups exist only in few places, the vast majority of Sri

Lanka is not covered. Whether in towns or villages: our observation is, that

most of the female dogs have no owners, even though some have regular feeders,

but hardly any of them would touch the dog or carry it to the operation-table,

even if the sterilizations are offered free of charge. Therefore, once the

present proposal has been accepted, it has to be followed up by a second

proposal: the local authorithies have to accept the responsibility to catch,

neuter and return the ownerless dogs. The same-day-release technique carried out

by TAPA (Tsunami Animal People Alliance) could be employed by the Government for

that purpose. But unfortunately Sri Lanka is still far from any sense of

responsibility and integrity: while the Minister sent some of his staff to

listen to the proposals resulting from the pilot-project, he accepted a draft

for a new law, which undermines the President's no-kill-order. While we are

holding on to every ray of hope, we are still far from really knowing our

animals in safety. While we do our best to stabilise the population in our

region, we also have to be realistic. While holding on to our vision to

establish animal-rights in Sri Lanka, we have to be contend to take one step at

the time, quietly carry on our work, cat by cat, dog by dog....

 

Thanks to all, who have helped us so far to do our tiny bit.