KAMPAR, Sept 24 — Animal lovers in this district have for years been forking out their own money to treat strays.
However, earlier this year a group of animal lovers decided to band together to expand their efforts to take care of the creatures.
This has resulted in the formation of Persatuan Pencinta Haiwan Jalanan Kampar — the town’s first registered non-governmental organisation catering to strays.
The group’s main mission is to have the stray animals spayed or neutered to limit the population.
They feel the move is more effective than Kampar District Council’s current practice of rounding up strays in the area before releasing them at Kampung Sahom in Kampar.
The association hopes to stop the council from capturing strays that have already been neutered or spayed.
“The council thinks that the problem of strays will be solved when they remove them from the original habitat,” said society president Yvonne Hoh.
Working with the town’s sole veterinarian, strays cared by feeders will be sent to Dr Nurul Ashikin Sapian’s clinic to be spayed or neutered before being marked to identify that they have already been treated.
Once the procedure is performed, the vet will proceed to ‘mark’ the stray by notching one of the ears while attaching a numbered tag on the other ear before releasing it to the volunteers.
Dr Nurul, who is also the association’s adviser, said to date, her clinic had neutered and spayed 43 dogs since it started the project in July.
“Our method does not include microchipping the strays as we feel the microchip does not serve any purpose,” she said.
“We would rather use the money to vaccinate the strays.”
Strays that are spayed or neutered by the association will also not be wearing collars.
“That is because strays tend to put on weight after they are spayed or neutered so it may outgrow the collar,” she said, adding that the strays may also lose the collars during fights.
Being a new association manned by a small group of volunteers, Hoh said the association could only conduct the Trap Neuter and Release (TNR) project now.
“Our next plan is to have educational programmes to highlight the importance of neutering or spaying your pets,” she added.
The association received a boost when Kampar MP Thomas Su allocated funding for its TNR project.
Su said stray animals were a problem in the area and his office or the council was inundated by calls from people to remove strays.
“So rather than letting the council catch the strays, why not we neuter or spay them to contain its population,” he said.
For more details about the association, contact them through their Facebook page Persatuan Pencinta Haiwan Jalanan Kampar — Kampar Tnr.
