Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram has as­sured the Trinidad and To­ba­go So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals (TTSP­CA) that it will re­ceive the fund­ing it des­per­ate­ly needs to car­ry out its du­ties.

Speak­ing dur­ing the han­dover of an­i­mal chow to the TTSP­CA’s Port-of-Spain shel­ter yes­ter­day, Rati­ram said the long-stand­ing is­sue of a sub­ven­tion will be ad­dressed.

“The TTSP­CA has been do­ing yeo­man ser­vice for decades. It is un­ac­cept­able that they have not re­ceived the fund­ing that was al­lo­cat­ed to them. I will per­son­al­ly en­sure this mat­ter is ad­dressed and that they re­ceive what is owed, he said.”

Rati­ram was joined by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der and Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary Neil Go­sine as they toured the Mu­cu­rapo fa­cil­i­ty.

Since the procla­ma­tion of the Dog Con­trol Act, the TTSP­CA has re­ceived sev­er­al sub­ven­tions from gov­ern­ment to fa­cil­i­tate its op­er­a­tions.

The first came in 2014, when funds were al­lo­cat­ed for the con­struc­tion of “class A ken­nels” and to pro­vide free an­i­mal shel­ter for a one-year pe­ri­od.

Last year, TTSP­CA of­fi­cials said the shel­ter faced clo­sure by Sep­tem­ber if it did not re­ceive $1.2 mil­lion to op­er­ate and the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment had promised to as­sist.

Joshua Ho­sein, an an­i­mal ac­tivist who co­or­di­nat­ed the truck­load do­na­tion of an­i­mal chow yes­ter­day, de­scribed the event as “just the be­gin­ning.” He an­nounced plans for a stake­hold­er sum­mit to unite shel­ters and res­cue op­er­a­tions un­der a sin­gle ad­vo­ca­cy front.”

TTSP­CA di­rec­tor Sara May­nard thanked donors for their gen­er­ous sup­port.

She ex­plained the do­na­tion would not on­ly ben­e­fit the Port-of-Spain shel­ter but would al­so be dis­trib­uted to oth­er an­i­mal wel­fare or­gan­i­sa­tions across the coun­try.

Min­is­ter Alexan­der reaf­firmed Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to an­i­mal wel­fare.

He said more min­is­ters are ex­pect­ed to lend sup­port in the com­ing weeks and months, sig­nalling what he called “a grow­ing force with­in Cab­i­net” to strength­en part­ner­ships with an­i­mal wel­fare groups like the TTSP­CA.