Funding animal welfare societies

While we obviously sympathise with the unfortunate puppy that Ms K. Chetcuti found abandoned, it seems that the criticism directed at "animal associations" is somewhat misdirected.

The first point is that the plight of the hundreds of abandoned animals is the responsibility of the irresponsible, heartless humans who abandon them.

The animal welfare NGOs (except the SPCA) are run completely by volunteers, with severely limited funds provided by the public. The only society that receives government funding is the SPCA.

In spite of this, the volunteers every week and every year help save the life of hundreds of stray and sick dogs and cats. Mostly these stories are not reported; it is of course inevitable that an under-funded voluntary sector cannot (and shouldn't have to) deal with every single animal tragedy.

For Dr Lino Vella to claim he "expected some kind of rescue back-up service" from the voluntary NGOs is an insult to the societies and volunteers who do save the lives of unwanted animals.

It is also rather disingenuous of him, when he is aware of our proposal to tackle the issue of stray animals by mass neutering.

Our proposal to do this neutering at no cost to the government, by the use of foreign veterinarians, has been stalled by his department over objections to the granting of permission for foreign vets to work here. In spite of the fact that they would be doing work for a very limited time period, on animals that would not otherwise be operated on.

Perhaps it is time for the debate on funding to be re-opened. The control of stray animals is a social problem and should not depend upon the intervention of volunteer animal welfare societies. It is also questionable that only one society (the SPCA) receives all the state funding. If this funding was increased and allocated to other societies, a greater depth of coverage would be available.

Finally, no one shares the frustration of animal cruelty more than the many dedicated volunteers who work for the various animal welfare NGOs. Just imagine how much worse the plight of animals would be without them.