Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏) has proposed an amendment to the Condominium Administration Act (公寓大廈管理條例) to scrap the provisions that grant condo management committees authority to prohibit ownership of pets.
Articles 16 and 23 of the act allow management to ban pets in apartments by drawing up “no-pet” condominium regulations, “which could cause an increase in strays and thereby crowd shelters,” Wang said yesterday.
“As the Animal Protection Act has recently been amended, with the goal of ending euthanasia in shelters in two years, these provisions that put pressure on pet owners and diminish people’s willingness to have pets, which might be adopted from shelters, are against both the spirit of the Animal Protection Act and global trends,” the lawmaker said.
The provisions not only allow condos to implement pet bans, but are also conducive to discrimination, Life Conservationist Association member Tang Yi-jhih (湯宜之) said.
“We have reports saying that there have been threatening notices put up in communities, which claim that ‘some residents are unhappy about households with pets and have placed poison in various places; the consequences are to be borne by [the pet owners].’”
Yang Che-wei (楊哲維), an official at the Ministry of the Interior’s Construction and Planning Agency, said the legislation was a product of different times, and since society has changed and the provisions encourage prohibitions unfriendly to animals, “the agency is not against deleting those clauses that allow condos to set the related bans.”
Chiang Wen-chuan (江文全), Animal Protection Division head of the Council of Agriculture’s Animal Husbandry Department, agreed, saying that as pets are now called “companion animals,” “it’s clear in this change of terms” that people view pets differently now.
When asked whether condominiums would be able to keep their regulations banning pets in place after the scrapping of the clauses, or whether they would in the future not be allowed to set bans, Yang said removing the clauses was simply to “remove negative influences,” hinting at the possible ineffectiveness of the move to curb the banning of pets.
Wang said the principle of non-retroactivity of law is to be respected, but further regulations would be hashed out to accompany the amendment to make the animal-friendly legislative proposal more comprehensive and binding.
“As one in four households in the nation owns pets, it is also possible for residents to submit a motion in their management committee meetings to veto or change existing condo regulations, after the provisions are scrapped,” she added.
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