Letter: Local councils, biggest dog abusers in Malaysia

By Parimalawani Muthiah,  Founder of the Malaysian Dogs Deserve Better canine welfare project

The Malaysian Dogs Deserve Better (MDDB) canine welfare project is not shocked with the recent revelation of blatant animal abuse by the Batu Pahat Municipal Council.

A video footage uploaded on Youtube shows four men holding down a dog with the use of a loop and rope and euthanising the poor animal in the most brutal manner imaginable.

MDDB is not shocked because the local councils in this country have proven many times over that they are the biggest dog abusers in Malaysia.

Since MDDB started out more than three years ago, we had battled Kuala Lumpur City Hall, the Selayang Municipal Council and the Klang Municipal Council over the way stray dogs were handled and managed.

In the recent Batu Pahat case, we would like to ask the council president Sallehuddin Hassan if any of the men involved in the brutal act was either a veterinarian or a veterinary technician.

If none of them are, these men as well as the council could have commited a crime under the Poisons Act as only a veterinarian or a veterinary technician can handle and administer the drugs for euthanasia.

Sallehuddin has also been quoted as saying that the council pays private dog catching contractors RM40 per dog caught.

This practice of hiring canine bounty hunters is the main reason why the problem of strays in the country cannot be solved.

These bounty hunting companies can only be in business as long as there are strays and due to this the methods utilised is not the best option to decrease the numbers.

We would like to suggest that the money used to pay these crony canine bounty hunting companies is instead used to implement the Trap-Neuter-Release-Manage (TNRM) method which has proven to be successful in many other countries.

Under this system, dogs are neutered and released back to their original environment or relocated to dog friendly neighbourhoods as community dogs that are fed and monitored by animal welfare groups and residents.

This method prevents the increase in population as there would no longer be any new births.

Currently, there are such colonies maintained in Kuala Lumpur and several parts of Selangor by animal lovers and the amount of strays in these areas have tremendously decreased.

MDDB urges the Federal Government to step in and put and end to this blatant cruelty towards dogs by the country’s local councils.

For many, it is becoming increasingly difficuly to tolerate such acts of brutality against man’s best friend much longer.

Also read, What local councils do to stray animals