About half of the nation’s public animal shelters fail to walk dogs every day, animal rights advocates and lawmakers said yesterday, calling on the authorities to remedy a shortage of personnel at the shelters.
At a news conference at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, the Taiwan Animal Protection Administration Watch Alliance presented a survey about the number of volunteers and dog walking frequency at 31 public animal shelters.
Caretakers at the shelters should take the dogs out for a walk twice a day for 15 to 30 minutes each for the animals’ well-being, alliance executive director Ho Tsung-hsun (何宗勳) said.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
However, the shelters do not have enough personnel, he said, adding that even the shelter in Taipei, which has the greatest access to resources, only has 61 volunteers taking care of 610 dogs.
The shelters in Hualien and Lienchiang counties only have two volunteers taking care of 100 to 120 dogs, he said, adding that there is no public animal shelter in Yunlin County.
Although public shelters have been prohibited from performing euthanasia since Feb. 6, animal welfare is still in need of improvement, which should start by promoting dog walking, alliance convener Wang Wei-chi (王維治) said.
In terms of official personnel, there are 260 animal caretakers and 103 veterinarians at 33 shelters across the nation, Council of Agriculture (COA) Animal Protection section chief Jiang Wen-chuan (江文全) said.
Some animal shelters are in remote areas, with the one in Chiayi County near a garbage recycling site, making it difficult to attract volunteers, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏) said.
Wang was instrumental in passing the legislation banning euthanasia at the shelters.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) asked whether supplementary measures are ready to complement the euthanasia ban.
Complete institutions that provide incentives would attract volunteers to the shelters, but many counties lack regulations governing volunteer services, including Yunlin, Taitung, Hualien, Penghu and Lienchiang counties, as well as Keelung City, she said.
Jiang said that while the Animal Protection Act (動物保護法) requires local governments to set up animal shelters, the shelters’ improvement and issues like dog walking are not covered by the act.
The COA would help improve animal shelters and would start by with evaluating their conditions, Jiang said, without providing a timetable.
Two shelters under reconstruction were not included in the survey, which was conducted from Feb. 23 to the end of March.
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