Pres­i­dent of the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion An­i­mals are Hu­man Too, Nali­ni Di­al yes­ter­day wel­comed the de­ci­sion by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment to aban­don plans to pro­claim the dan­ger­ous Dogs Act 2000 and in­stead draft new leg­is­la­tion to deal with the is­sue. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan told Thurs­day's post Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence in St Clair the Gov­ern­ment had changed its mind on seek­ing to pro­claim the leg­is­la­tion in Au­gust af­ter many cit­i­zens and dog lovers ob­ject­ed to the bill.

Di­al said yes­ter­day she was pleased by the de­vel­op­ment. She in­sist­ed the dog own­ers will have to place more em­pha­sis on se­cur­ing the an­i­mals to re­duce the in­ci­dence of vi­o­lent at­tacks on in­no­cent cit­i­zens. There have been sev­er­al at­tacks on cit­i­zens by pit­bulls in re­cent months in T&T, in­clud­ing a preg­nant woman in Point Fortin. She said if the bill was pro­claimed it would not have worked as in­tend­ed. Di­al said the cam­paign to re­move stray dogs on the na­tion's streets will be in­ten­si­fied by her or­gan­i­sa­tion in the com­ing weeks. "The stray dog pop­u­la­tion is to­tal­ly out of con­trol," Di­al added.