CARISA LEE

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals (TTSP­CA) has re­ceived enough do­na­tions and funds to keep the an­i­mal shel­ter open for the rest of the year.

“We looked at all our ac­counts and all of what we had, maybe two months of fund­ing in­side. So when that hap­pened we put all the in­for­ma­tion out there,” TTSP­CA chair­man Si­ta Ku­ruvil­la said as she in­di­cat­ed the so­ci­ety would be able to func­tion un­til year’s end.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia in Ju­ly, Ku­ruvil­la had said the or­gan­i­sa­tion on­ly had enough mon­ey to keep its doors open un­til Sep­tem­ber. Back then, she begged for Gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion to en­sure the 129-year-old so­ci­ety could con­tin­ue its work.

But speak­ing yes­ter­day she said, Good Samar­i­tans were the ones re­spon­si­ble for the TTSP­CA’s doors re­main­ing open for an ad­di­tion­al two months, as they were yet to hear from the Gov­ern­ment.

“The pub­lic has re­spond­ed fan­tas­ti­cal­ly,” she re­vealed.

The non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion (NGO), lo­cat­ed at 21 Christo­pher Samuel Dri­ve, Port-of-Spain, has asked the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment for as­sis­tance since Feb­ru­ary.

“We ap­plied for $400,000 ... we haven’t got con­fir­ma­tion of that, that any­thing will go through as yet, we’re hop­ing,” she said.

She said they al­so hope for an an­nu­al sub­ven­tion be­cause they are tak­ing on a lot of what should be gov­ern­ment re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, as they have no func­tion­ing fa­cil­i­ties in any part of the coun­try oth­er than the San Fer­nan­do pound.

“Which has a lot of its own prob­lems, we even tak­ing dogs from South,” Ku­ruvil­la said.

She said they did meet with gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and sub­mit­ted a de­tailed pro­pos­al on why the State should help fund the shel­ter.

Ad­mit­ting that the shel­ter ex­pens­es sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased af­ter the pan­dem­ic, she en­sured that the do­na­tions made did not break the Good Samar­i­tans’ backs, so they made a big push for peo­ple to com­mit to a month­ly stand­ing or­der.

“It didn’t have to be a lot, 50 dol­lars a month or any­thing like that be­cause if we knew that every month we had a cer­tain amount com­ing in, we know we can keep go­ing.

“Peo­ple them­selves have come for­ward and said they go­ing to do a lil fundrais­ing project for ‘you on our own’,” she added.

The NGO held a garage sale over the week­end but Ku­ruvil­la ex­plained that this was time-con­sum­ing and af­fects how the shel­ter func­tions. The chair­man al­so lament­ed that while they strug­gle to get fund­ing, they con­tin­ue to re­ceive sev­er­al re­ports of an­i­mal cru­el­ty and ne­glect.

Any­one will­ing to do­nate to the shel­ter can mail cheques to the TTSP­CA, PO Box 4607, St James,180199.

Bank de­posits may be made at any branch of the Roy­al Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go (RBC) to Ac­count #000 940 1266 1446. And, if you wish to pay via Pay­Pal the in­for­ma­tion is do­nate@ttsp­ca.org