Sascha Wil­son

Since be­ing pro­claimed nine years ago, an­i­mal rights ac­tivists are con­cerned that the Dog Con­trol Act re­mains a tooth­less piece of leg­is­la­tion as it ap­pears that none of the pro­vi­sions un­der the Act has been en­forced in spite of sev­er­al dog at­tacks.

Con­cerned about neg­li­gent own­ers, at­tacks against peo­ple, in­clud­ing chil­dren, and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of the own­er­ship of “dan­ger­ous dogs” as pets, pro­tec­tion and for prof­it, the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, un­der which the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty lies, is be­ing urged to ur­gent­ly ad­dress this is­sue.

The Act speaks to strin­gent mea­sures and hefty fines for non-com­pli­ance, on the own­er of six types of Class A dogs which are deemed to be dan­ger­ous. These in­clude the Amer­i­can Pit Bull Ter­ri­er, Amer­i­can Stafford­shire Ter­ri­er, Amer­i­can Bul­ly, Do­go Ar­genti­no, Japan­ese Tosa and Fi­la Brasileiro.

There have been sev­er­al in­ci­dents of dog at­tacks, in­clud­ing in re­cent times 11-year-old Rachel Bhag­wan­deen killed by an Amer­i­can Bull­dog, last Au­gust, a three-year-old Jalil Naidoolies at­tacked and in­jured at his home last No­vem­ber and ear­li­er this month two-year-old Vishal De­onath was at­tacked by his grand­fa­ther’s dog.

An­i­mal rights ac­tivist Nali­ni Di­al said un­der the Act own­ers of a par­tic­u­lar must meet about 20 dif­fer­ent re­quire­ments to own a par­tic­u­lar breed of dog, in­clud­ing hav­ing the dog reg­is­tered, li­censed, and trained, prop­er­ly se­cur­ing the premis­es and hav­ing it in­spect­ed, and in­sur­ance, but none of that has been en­forced by the min­istry.

Ques­tion­ing the si­lence of Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi, she said, “Is just like a child dies, noth­ing, un­less this hap­pens again and then there will be a big up­roar again and that’s how it goes in Trinidad.”

Trinidad & To­ba­go So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals (TTSP­CA) chair­man Si­ta Ku­ruvil­la said the main re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for im­ple­men­ta­tion and en­force­ment lies with the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and the po­lice by ex­ten­sion.

How­ev­er, she said there are no sys­tems with­in the cor­po­ra­tion for li­cens­ing and reg­is­tra­tion of the an­i­mals.

“It’s very wor­ry­ing for us be­cause noth­ing has been done about im­ple­men­ta­tion peo­ple have gone back to breed­ing and sell­ing Class A dogs, pit bulls and bul­lies and so on. The num­bers are pro­lif­er­at­ing.”

While the po­lice can take ac­tion un­der the Act, she says the sup­port sys­tem is not in place. In the case of re­moval of the dog, the po­lice are not trained to han­dle the dogs, there must be prop­er trans­port and prop­er ac­com­mo­da­tions for the dog.

While the TTP­SCA is prob­a­bly one of the few shel­ters with ken­nels built with the spec­i­fi­ca­tions list­ed un­der the leg­is­la­tion for Class A dogs, she said is­sues of space, work­load and fi­nances will arise since the So­ci­ety is a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Tak­ing is­sue with cer­tain parts of leg­is­la­tion, she said the Act should ad­dress dog own­er­ship in gen­er­al. “That leg­is­la­tion is very flawed be­cause when you at the his­to­ry of dog at­tacks in the coun­try, there are a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of dog at­tacks that are not car­ried out by dogs that are on that list,” she said.

She al­so warned the Gov­ern­ment against reignit­ing threats of fines against own­ers, say­ing that will on­ly lead to the wan­ton aban­don­ment of dogs which took place when the Act was passed in 2014.

“We have the fig­ures with the num­bers we picked up off the road or res­cued and oth­ers that came in­to our fa­cil­i­ty and it was 100 plus,” she said.

Ku­ruvil­la urged the min­istry to work with the cor­po­ra­tion and stake­hold­ers to find the best way to ap­proach this mat­ter.

Mean­while, an­i­mal ac­tivist Marisa Ram­nath said while the law has not been en­forced, the onus is on dog own­ers to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their pets.

“It is not the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment to ful­ly ed­u­cate some­body, just like it is not the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the gov­ern­ment to ed­u­cate your child.”

Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Dr Allen Sam­my said that noth­ing con­cern­ing the reg­is­tra­tion of dogs has come to the coun­cil’s at­ten­tion in re­cent years. At­tempts to reach Min­is­ter Al-Rawi were un­suc­cess­ful.