David Ee Straits Times 12 Aug 13;
COMPLAINTS about stray dogs barking in the forested area near Bukit Batok Street 24 have led to the authorities preparing to trap them.
But a dog welfare group, indignant that complaints from just a few people may cause many dogs to be trapped and culled, is trying to block the move with a survey of over 300 residents.
The survey by Save Our Street Dogs found that 94 per cent were not bothered by the barking, while 92 per cent were against the dogs being trapped and culled by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA).
More than 70 per cent did not know what happens to stray dogs after they are caught.
The AVA euthanises most stray dogs it catches. It works with animal welfare groups to re-home suitable ones.
While most residents have seen the strays around, none had been hurt by them, added the survey, believed to be the first in Singapore to gauge people's attitudes towards stray dogs.
In an e-mail, an AVA spokesman said that the agency had received complaints from four residents over the past year.
The AVA has long maintained that stray dogs can threaten public safety when in a pack. Some have been known to chase and attack people.
It did not comment on the survey results nor say when its trapping operation would begin.
The most persistent complainant, who did not respond to queries from The Straits Times, first made his grievances known a year ago. He recently directed these to Minister for National Development Khaw Boon Wan and Jurong GRC MP Halimah Yacob.
The incident came to a head when the AVA decided last month to catch the strays after meetings involving it, Jurong Town Council, the complainant and a volunteer mediator from an animal welfare group failed to find a solution satisfactory to all.
According to the volunteer mediator, who wanted to be known only as Irene, a vote was held at the latest meeting on July 10.
"No one wanted to cull the strays" but the complainant "kept pressing" the AVA on the issue, she said.
Save Our Street Dogs president Siew Tuck Wah told The Straits Times that the survey results bore out what animal welfare groups have long suspected - that "most people do not want to see the (stray) dogs dead".
"There's been talk that the 'silent majority' are ambivalent," said Dr Siew, who backs the idea of a wider, independent survey to understand the population's sentiments towards stray dogs.
"But this tells us that most Singaporeans are actually compassionate, that the majority are willing to work towards a solution rather than culling."
A wider sterilisation effort would be an effective and more humane long-term solution, as animal groups have said before.
In her 13 years living opposite the forested area, resident Irene Ong, 39, said she had never seen the dogs "disturb" anyone. "I was pretty upset when I heard that the dogs were going to be trapped. If you leave them alone, they'll leave you alone."
Meanwhile, Minister for Law and Foreign Affairs K. Shanmugam, an animal rights advocate, posted an adoption appeal on his Facebook page last Saturday on behalf of an abandoned mongrel.
It has been nicknamed the "Tampines Hachiko" for waiting for its owner at the park connector where it was abandoned. In the 1920s, a dog named Hachiko became a national icon in Japan after it kept showing up at a train station to wait for its owner, nine years after the man's death.
Additional reporting by Audrey Tan
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