Municipality teams take control of dog shelter in Lefkoşa

COUNCILS are to be warned they must safeguard animal rights in an unprecedented move — as municipality chiefs in Lefkoşa entered a privately run dog shelter yesterday amid “serious concerns” about conditions there.

Teams from Lefkoşa Turkish Municipality, accompanied by police officers and vets, were sent into the centre in the capital’s industrial zone after a judge granted a court order allowing them to launch an urgent inspection.

They “evaluated the situation” before drawing up plans to start cleaning and repairing the site today, mayor Mehmet Harmancı told this paper, adding that no dogs would be taken in until “standards of hygiene” had been met.

“We are prepared to do the best for the welfare of the animals,” he said. The centre had been run by Tomris Güven, head of the North Cyprus Society for the Protection of Animals, where a high number of deaths had occurred as a result of the recent canine distemper outbreak.

Mr Harmancı said he had obtained an “interim” injunction to check hygiene levels at the shelter and register the dogs being kept there, but that he planned to seize complete control of the site through the courts.

The move came following a protest outside the pound on Thursday by a number of animal welfare groups and dog lovers, who had urged Mr Harmancı to act.

Veterinary Department chief Hüda Hüdaoğlu said it was down to municipalities to have their own shelter, but that only Girne, Gönyeli, İskele, Gazimağusa and, as of yesterday, Lefkoşa did.

“But having a shelter is not an answer for the problems we are facing with strays and abandoned dogs,” he said.

“Each and every dog, whether on the street or owned, should be identified and chipped by the municipalities for us to then register them. [Thus] when a dog is found on the street we can know if there is an owner or not.

“This will eventually eliminate the number of strays on the streets and will also prevent outbreaks of diseases that will continue to be seen . . . if [animals] come into contact with dogs that haven’t been vaccinated.”

He stressed, however, that pet owners need not be worried, if their animals were vaccinated.

Mr Hüdaoğlu said that, while there were “good and bad” council-run shelters, he would be sending a written warning to municipal kennels next week — something that has “never been done before” — covering the “management of the shelters in the context of recommendations” and “hygiene, animal welfare and health” in the wake of the distemper epidemic. Mrs Güven yesterday questioned why the municipality had only stepped in to support animal welfare now and said that while she was pursuing “legal ways to hand over the shelter and association”, it did not give the council the right to lay claim to it.

“That shelter consists of 28 years of hard work and also contributions by the EU which I don’t want them to destroy,” she said.

Meanwhile Kyrenia Animal Rescue’s (KAR) shelter in Arapköy, which has been in “lockdown” since early April because of the distemper outbreak, will have a “grand reopening” at the end of August, chairman Margaret Ray told CyprusToday.

Mrs Ray said that while only one dog at the rescue centre was currently showing symptoms of distemper, the disease could take 12 weeks to clear.

The İskele Municipality shelter, which was also badly affected, has been told by the Veterinary Department to wait another 20 days before deciding when to reopen, after plans to start taking in dogs again at the end of May were put on hold.

The situation there is said to be “stable”, with no new dog deaths reported.