It’s not just people worrying about losing their homes amid the global economic downturn. Now, even canines face being dumped from their dog houses.
Coinciding with the local stock market plunge and a jump in the unemployment rate, animal rescuers say more and more dogs are being abandoned as owners look for ways to cut expenses.
Taking note of the problem, authorities in Taipei are trying to keep better track of dogs and their owners in a bid to prevent abandonment.
PHOTO: WALLY SANTANA, AP
Tiger Tung (董冠富), chief executive of the Taiwan Life Caring and Animal Rescue Organization, said his group has seen a marked increase in the number of dogs it has treated since the downturn began, especially larger breeds.
He said in the last three months his organization saved about 30 large-sized strays, including Old English sheepdogs and golden retrievers, compared with 10 in the three previous months.
“Big dogs tend to be thrown away during a slowing economy,” Tung said, adding that owners can save between NT$5,000 and NT$10,000 a month by abandoning them.
Taiwan has been hit hard by the global financial crisis, with the local stock index plummeting 46 percent from its peak in May and unemployment jumping to 4.27 percent in September.
Chen Wen-mei, a 44-year-old Buddhist who runs a private shelter in Linkou (林口), said many people are reluctant to spend the money to care for their dogs when they themselves are feeling the economic pinch.
She said she took in about 17 dogs in one week last month.
Yen I-feng (嚴一峰), director of the Taipei Municipal Institute for Animal Health, said city authorities are now strictly enforcing a law requiring dog owners to have their pets implanted with microchips.
The microchips allow authorities to trace abandoned dogs back to their owners.
Yen said those caught abandoning their pets are subject to a fine of NT$15,000.
Chen keeps about 300 dogs in her 600m² shelter, a gritty, tin-roofed building littered with plastic containers for food and drinking water.
“The dogs have their rights and have lives, too. It’s just that they cannot talk,” she said as she petted some nearby dogs.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching