OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals (TTSP­CA) may close its doors by Sep­tem­ber, due to a lack of fund­ing.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion, which has been in ex­is­tence for 129 years, is plead­ing with Gov­ern­ment for a sub­ven­tion.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, TTSP­CA chair­man Si­ta Ku­ruvil­la said the an­i­mal shel­ter has not re­cov­ered since COVID-19 and now may have no choice but to close.

The TTSP­CA needs $1.2 mil­lion a year to op­er­ate, and with no sub­ven­tion the chair­man said, the or­gan­i­sa­tion has al­ways been forced to raise funds.

“It is crit­i­cal, very crit­i­cal, and that is why we have been do­ing the re­cent push with ap­peals to the pub­lic. In­di­vid­u­als and small groups have come for­ward to help. We even had a group of young peo­ple who or­gan­ised a par­ty for us and do­nat­ed all the funds they raised. It was re­al­ly good of them,” she said.

She said enough mon­ey was raised to keep the TTSP­CA run­ning for two more months.

But Ku­ruvil­la lament­ed it takes a lot of work to be rais­ing funds. She feared if mon­ey did not come soon, the en­tire or­gan­i­sa­tion would suf­fer the same fate as the south of­fice.

“We can’t con­stant­ly be ap­peal­ing like this. At this point, we re­al­ly need to know that we’re get­ting a sub­ven­tion, oth­er­wise, we just don’t see a fu­ture. We’ve al­ready had to shut down our south fa­cil­i­ty, which is a sig­nif­i­cant loss.

“We are ac­tu­al­ly look­ing at clos­ing down. We were look­ing at al­most Sep­tem­ber. We went on a big dri­ve for an ap­peal to the pub­lic and did get some sup­port, which is go­ing to keep us go­ing for maybe an­oth­er month or two,” she ex­plained.

The TTSP­CA has re­ceived sub­ven­tions from the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment in the past to pro­vide fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance with main­te­nance, re­pairs, and on­go­ing op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es.

How­ev­er, the or­gan­i­sa­tion has yet to re­ceive the lat­est tranche.

“We have not had any­thing def­i­nite. We are keep­ing our fin­gers crossed. But we do need to ne­go­ti­ate with the Gov­ern­ment for some­thing re­li­able, a sub­ven­tion we can count on every year. A for­mal arrange­ment with the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment would be ide­al. I do want to men­tion that a com­mit­tee was formed in March of this year to ad­dress the en­tire is­sue of dog con­trol, in­clud­ing the Dog Con­trol Act and dog con­trol in gen­er­al. We’ve had one meet­ing, and we hope this will lead to a bet­ter work­ing re­la­tion­ship and sup­port,” she said.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to the fi­nan­cial is­sues fac­ing the TTSP­CA, Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi said, “We pre­vi­ous­ly arranged for the min­istry to sup­port them fi­nan­cial­ly. We’re in the process of do­ing that right now. So, we’re hop­ing to be able to as­sist.”