DOHA: A state-run stray control and animal protection department has caught some 57,000 stray cats from the country’s streets in the past seven years.
And since 2010, the number of stray dogs caught by the department at the Ministry of Environment totals 354, a senior official has said.
The department was set up to initially control the stray cat population due to their uncontrolled breeding and hazards they posed to people’s safety and the environment. In 2010, authorities began catching stray dogs as well, a consultant at the department, Dr Yusuf Radwan, told the Central Municipal Council (CMC).
Radwan said the strays were caught and dealt with in accordance with international law, and avoiding any cruelty to them.
He said the government had allocated funds in the budget estimates for the fiscal year 2012-13 to build a huge facility where strays caught would be housed.
The department has inked a deal with the World Society for the Protection of Animals for cooperation to take care of stray animals once the facility is ready.
Radwan said the design of the facility was expected to be ready in July this year and the project would be completed by the summer of 2014. “Qatar would thus become a pioneer in the field of animal welfare in the Middle East,” the official told the CMC.
He pointed out that a draft law making animal protection compulsory in the GCC was ready and could be enforced sooner rather than later.
The CMC, meanwhile, urged the Ministry of Municipality and Urban Planning to provide a plot of land on lease or a ready facility to Qatar Animal Welfare Society, a voluntary organisation set up by some animal-loving expatriates in 2004.
The society is facing financial problems and is not in a position to renew its rent contract for the premises, the CMC said in recommendations forwarded to the ministry. The civic and environment ministries must coordinate and find a suitable solution to the woes the society is facing, the CMC said.
It also urged the government to register the society as a non-profit non-governmental organisation.
“The society deserves the government’s support for the good work it is doing,” CMC Vice-Chairman and head of services committee, Jassem Al Malki, said.
The recommendations are an outcome of a meeting Kelly Allen, a member of the society, had with CMC members on April 29, it is learnt.
Janet Berry, Chairperson of the society, told this newspaper yesterday that they were currently taking care of some 250 animals, mostly stray cats and dogs.
She confirmed the society didn’t have any funding sources. The rent contract ends on May 31. The Peninsula
