The Animal Rights Foundation is communicating an appeal to all animal lovers and professionals who deal with the field of animal welfare protection and the promotion of their rights, to be persistent on the progress of the project that the Food and Veterinary Agency of the Republic of Kosovo has tendered (amount EUR 1.3 M) to a large number of veterinary clinics across Kosovo, on Friday, May 25, 2018.
The project, which will begin to be implemented soon, in the entire territory of Kosovo, is called “CNVR: Catch, Neuter, Vaccinate, Release”. This project aims to treat stray dogs professionally and medically, in order to provide them with a dignified treatment and well-being. Likewise, by castrating and sterilising them, the number of dogs living and wandering on the streets without any dedication from the social communities, would diminish more and more each year.
Let us remind everyone why we will be involved in this program:
- In a meeting in Kamenica, one of the veterinarians testified that killing dogs was a common thing to them;
- In Peja, the municipality and its officials testified that although the CNVR program was initiated by StrayCoco, they had no interest in respecting the program properly but left and abandoned dogs in a village called Sfërk in Peja Municipality – a place that is covered with all the waste of the region of Peja, where even the poisonous wastewater is located there;
- The municipality of Podujevo, last year made a massive and systematic dog assassination, where hunters proudly “cleaned” the city with blood and pain; in Graçanica, where the shelter on a hill, at the end of the village, left hundreds of isolated dogs there, without food and clean water – a place that was filled with bones and their remains;
- and not to mention hundreds of cases of dog abuses for dog fightings;
- illegal dog commerce at the Kosovo flea markets and many other cases where dogs were instrumentalized and mistreated.
- Moreover, the sum of 1.3 million euros are Kosovar taxpayer money. We as citizens have the right to know where the public funds are allocated and how our money is spent.
So what should be taken into consideration to ensure that we all work together to guarantee a proper progress and implementation of the project?
- We will ask the Food and Veterinary Agency to publish transparently every step of the project (According to Law no. 04 / L-042 ON PUBLIC PROCUREMENT IN THE REPUBLIC OF KOSOVO, Article 10, paragraph 1.2.5.) for all citizens, and especially for the civil society – which is focused on protecting the stray dogs from any kind of injustice, non-human or non-ethical treatment throughout the whole process.
- We will be part of the MONITORING during the program implementation procedures. With this point, we would want to clarify that we will establish coordinative approaches in harmony with everyone involved. We also expect from the Agency itself and the other stakeholders involved in this project, to consider this
request as something to be shared in terms of responsibility and not as a direct obstacle to them.
Prishtina, August 19, 2020