RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Vice pres­i­dent of An­i­mals Alive Jow­elle De Souza says le­gal ac­tion will be filed against the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion, for eu­thanis­ing pet dogs with­in two hours of cap­ture with­out al­low­ing the own­ers enough time to claim them.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, De Souza said since the start of the year, over 7,000 pets have been killed by the cor­po­ra­tion.

Say­ing she has com­piled a list of the an­i­mals, De Souza ques­tioned why the an­i­mals are not be­ing kept for five days in the San Fer­nan­do pound un­til the own­er claims the an­i­mals.

The San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion an­nounced on Jan­u­ary 17 that it was re­open­ing the ca­nine shel­ter at La­dy Hailes Av­enue be­cause of the preva­lence of stray dogs.

But De Souza ar­gued that al­though pets were be­ing picked up by the dog catch­ers, the stray dogs were still roam­ing the streets.

Nam­ing a vet al­leged­ly in­volved in a con­spir­a­cy with the cor­po­ra­tion, De Souza said she has been seek­ing a meet­ing with May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo about the prob­lem but has not yet been suc­cess­ful.

De Souza said a fam­i­ly in Mon Re­pos, whose dog Gin­ger was put down last week Tues­day, has been dis­traught since the in­ci­dent.

“Why are they cap­tur­ing peo­ple’s pets? If you see a col­lar on the an­i­mal and the an­i­mal is docile, then why cap­ture and kill an in­no­cent pet? This is in­hu­mane and down­right wicked!” she said.

Say­ing that An­i­mals Alive re­cent­ly opened a new sanc­tu­ary in Princes Town, De Souza said the var­i­ous re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, as well as city and bor­ough cor­po­ra­tions, should be abid­ing by the law as it re­lates to an­i­mals.

“The laws to pro­tect an­i­mals have been passed and en­act­ed and every Cor­po­ra­tion should have a shel­ter for strays,” she de­clared.

De Souza said the An­i­mals Alive Sanc­tu­ary in South Oropouche has 623 an­i­mals com­pris­ing cats, dogs, tur­tles and hors­es.

“The TTPS comes and sees about the hors­es. We res­cued the hors­es from Princes Town. We don’t have that many re­sources, yet we don’t put down any dogs there at our shel­ter,” she said.

De Souza said the own­er of the dog con­tact­ed the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion when the dog went miss­ing and was told to check at the Wharf. How­ev­er, she said the dog was nev­er tak­en there but was in­stead trans­port­ed to a vet in San Fer­nan­do who eu­thanised the an­i­mal.

Guardian Me­dia made sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact May­or Re­grel­lo for com­ment but he did not re­spond to calls or mes­sages.