Richard Lord

Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) ac­tivist Nali­ni Di­al is pre­dict­ing that some dog own­ers will let their pit bulls loose when the Dan­ger­ous Dogs Act is pro­claimed in a few months. She made that point dur­ing a con­sul­ta­tion host­ed by the COP on the leg­is­la­tion at the Tu­na­puna Hin­du School over the the week­end.

"We bold­ly say this be­cause we al­ready fore­see that one of the ma­jor fall­outs when the DDA is pro­claimed is the mass aban­don­ment by own­ers of these spec­i­fied breeds of dogs," she said. "Not all own­ers of these dogs, can or will abide by the strin­gent rules and reg­u­la­tions called for, and so the eas­i­est way out for them, would be to let loose their dogs, all over the coun­try," Di­al said.

"We are al­ready faced with a se­ri­ous stray dog pop­u­la­tion prob­lem, and now to add to that, we are to­tal­ly not pre­pared. "Nei­ther the lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions, nor dog pounds and shel­ters, have the re­quired in­fra­struc­ture, staff, trained per­son­nel, re­sources and reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies to deal with the in­flux of dogs we ex­pect.

"We do not even fore­see this law be­ing prop­er­ly en­forced." She said based on the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act 1921, own­ers were ac­count­able for se­cur­ing their an­i­mals on their premis­es. Fail­ing to abide by this, they were li­able to a fine, and even im­pris­on­ment, she added. Di­al, who is al­so a mem­ber of the or­gan­i­sa­tion An­i­mals are Hu­mans Too, said the lack of en­force­ment of this law "has played a ma­jor role in our present sit­u­a­tion with the stray dogs."