08 Aug 2018

In an effort to minimise cases of cruelty to animals, Maun Animal Welfare Society (MAWS) is working tirelessly to sensitise the public on the issue, especially abuse of dogs.

MAWS is also calling on  government to enact stiffer penalties against perpetrators. The organisation’s veterinarian, Ms Vicki Elliot, said in an interview recently that they intended to work with Maun Administration Council to assist with enforcing legislative measures against cruelty to animals.

She said she was worried that the police, as custodians of Animal Act, were sometimes reluctant to attend to animal matters as compared to human cases. Furthermore, she also said that Animal Act was outdated considering that it was ratified in 1936 and later amended in 1966.

For instance, she said the charge for animal abuse as stipulated in the Act was a paltry P50 something she said did not deter perpetrators from being cruel to animals

She further said that stray dogs were prone to diseases due to circumstances such as cold and lack of sufficient food which they were faced with outside their owner’s care.

Meanwhile, Mr Vasco Sekoloto who is an animal inspector at MAWS added that Batswana could not be blamed, especially those in rural areas, as they were abusing animals out of ignorance.

“Most of them do not have access to various means of communication that help in the spreading of information,” he said.
He said the abuse was minimum in urban areas as a result of proper communication which included television, advanced cellphone technology as well as easy access to newspaper articles.

Mr Sekoloto however said that one of the common practices that reflected ignorance in rural areas was whereby a dog’s lingual frenulum was removed, with the belief that it would make the dog’s tongue flexible.

“We don’t encourage the removal of lingual frenulum. Dogs sometimes do not eat because of internal intestinal parasites, not because they have the lingual frenulum,” he said.
He also encouraged the use of deboned meat to feed dogs saying that bones could hook in between the teeth or even block the dogs throat. Ends