Useless law by Allen Lockington
Submitted by AllenL on Tue, 26/01/2010 - 9:00am
A sign posted outside the Agriculture Departments vet office in Lautoka state that its an offense to keep unlicensed dogs.
There are dogs every where in Lautoka. I moved from one section of Waiyavi to another and the attitude of dog owners is the same. Dogs everywhere.
Government should hand over the licensing of dogs to the City Council or an NGO to police it, because as it is the Dog Act is a useless law.
Nobody seems to care and nobody seems to want to enforce it.
By AllenL
Team to tackle canine woes
Team to tackle canine woes (Fiji Times 28/1/2010)
Thursday, January 28, 2010
A TEAM of officials from the Ministry of Agriculture will visit Lautoka to address the issue of unlicensed dogs.
Ministry permanent secretary Colonel Mason Smith said there was a team from the Animal Health Department that was responsible for looking into issues concerning dog licensing activities.
"We do monitoring of licensed and unlicensed dogs and there are penalties for people who keep unlicensed dogs under the Dog Act. I'm not sure where the team is currently visiting but they will go to Lautoka some time in June or July," he said.
Colonel Smith said they would work closely with the municipalities of areas they intended to visit.
The issue of stray dogs in Lautoka continues to be a major problem for members of the public and the Lautoka Town Council, which is still waiting for an approval of their request for the Ministry of Agriculture to conduct a dog poisoning exercise.
Council acting chief executive Shiva Rajan said the Ministry of Agriculture should take responsibility for the issue of stray dogs since they were the authorities involved in dog licensing activities.
In an earlier response, Colonel Smith had said the poisoning exercise was cruel and inhumane and they preferred the dog trapping and euthanising campaign.
which was stopped by the Lautoka City Council in December last year.
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