Article: Vet chief to visit island

Friday May 15, 2009

KLANG: The director-general of the Department of Veterinary Services, Datuk Dr Abd Aziz Jamaluddin, will visit Pulau Ketam and its surrounding islands tomorrow to assess the ‘dog’ situation there.

He said he wanted to evaluate the stray dog problem on Pulau Ketam and to check on the plight of the dogs marooned on Pulau Tengah and Pulau Selat Kering.

Pulau Ketam residents dumped about 400 dogs on Pulau Tengah and Pulau Selat Kering in March to reduce the number of strays on their island.

So far, a large number of the dogs have died and those surviving have been living off the carcasses of dogs.

Dr Abd Aziz said the department, which was working with animal welfare groups and the Klang Municipal Council, was now reviving the dogs, sterilising and “re-homing them.”

He said there was an urgent need to impose regulations to ensure that dogs are not dumped or left to run wild.

“We must educate the islanders that when they keep dogs, they must be responsible for them,” he said.

He said one of the biggest problems the department had in enforcing measures was the different local council by-laws nationwide.

It would be easy for the department to step in if there was a single system for all local councils, he said.

To date, almost 30 dogs have been rescued.

This article was taken from: The Star Online: Nation 15 May 2009