Update laws to protect animals

THE EDITOR: Open letter to the Attorney General.

On Sunday night I watched a new vehicle drive down the shelter road and fling two cats into the bamboo and drive off. This was after an exhausting day of rounds of looking after the shelter animals. The poor shell-shocked cats shot off in the darkness and disappeared. Who knows if they are alive still.

How can people be so cruel to abandon their pets and devalue their lives? Does the blame lie in the fact that the school system does not teach young people enough about respect for animals and the inter-relatedness of humans and animals or is it because there are hardly any strong laws to protect animals from cruelty and make offenders accountable? Cruelty is an acceptable norm.

Animal shelters and animal welfare groups are inundated with calls and cases of abuse and we have no successful way of dealing with these reports. SOS calls for animals are hardly taken seriously by the police. So animals are still, in 2017, largely unprotected by the law.

Please, Mr Attorney General, get the welfare and interest groups to convene so we can recommend the updating of laws and the increase of fines and by so doing protect our animals from cruelty. This is long overdue and we are begging. Pet ownership especially needs to be a regulated.

If jurisprudence is too lengthy a process, then fines could simply be increased. This good source of revenue will also be a grand deterrent for people who may want to take advantage of animals.

And, most importantly, the State needs to subsidise the spaying and neutering of dogs and cats because the most widespread form of cruelty is how unwanted litters have to needlessly suffer. Please, I plead on behalf of the animal welfare groups as we crave a more humane and civil society for TT.

KATHRYN CLEGHORN, president, Animals Alive