A legislative solution for stray dogs
The Romanian Parliament has finally adopted a law that regulates the way in which local authorities can solve the situation of stray dogs.
Florentin Căpitănescu, 11.09.2013, 13:12
A four year old boy had to die for the issue of stray dogs — an extremely old one, but never treated seriously — to be placed top on the Romanian authorities’ agenda. Ever since the communist regime, when the phenomenon started to take shape, authorities have either not wanted or not been able to solve the issue of stray dogs. Some even talk about indolence and utter indifference.
Against such a background, where the general public’s pressure is higher than ever, the Romanian Parliament has decided to pass a law that allows euthanasia, a solution that most people seem to agree with. The law stipulates that a dog placed in a shelter can be claimed or adopted, free of charge, within 14 days. At the end of this period, local authorities may decide if the dogs are euthanised or kept longer in the shelter.
Therefore, euthanasia is not, as many have understood it, a compulsory solution. Aggressive dogs and those declared incurably ill are euthanised right away. People who decide to take animals from shelters must sign a declaration stating that they commit themselves to feeding or caring for the dog. Also, they are not allowed to abandon them and, in case they do not want the dogs anymore, they must send them back into the authorities’ care, not into the streets.
The voting in Parliament, in whose drawers the law had been sitting quiet for about 6 years, was accompanied by many protests by NGOs protecting animals’ rights. But, if we look at the situation from a different perspective, we see that the millions of Euros that have passed through these NGOs’ accounts — money allotted by municipalities and from European funds — have been completely useless. The building of shelters, adoption, sterilization or castration, as solutions to curb the phenomenon, have been unproductive.
Proof of these measures’ lack of efficiency is the fact that, according to an analysis made by the municipality, there are some 65 thousand stray dogs in Bucharest alone. The figure is huge, not only for a European capital, but for any civilized city in the world. Under such conditions, there should be no surprise that in many cases stray dogs are included in the ‘travel alert’ category for the foreigners who decide to visit Romania’s capital.
