Organizations and volunteers in the field of animal protection are calling on authorities to toughen penalties for animal cruelty and to establish, from January 1st, a national department for the protection and management of animals. The requests were made during a protest in front of the Government, where participants talked about cases of cruelty and killing of animals, as well as the increasingly frequent abandonment of pets, reports IPN.
The protesters demand an increase to seven years of imprisonment for severe cases of animal cruelty and a more efficient investigation of these acts. They call for the accountability of those guilty in the cases recently reported in Soldanesti, Floresti, Rezina, Soroca and other localities.
At the same time, activists are calling for a national program for the management of stray animals and mandatory sterilization of mixed-breed dogs and cats, to prevent abandonment and reduce the number of animals on the streets.
The president of the “Human Society” association, Karl Luganov, has stated that the authorities have not solved the problem of stray animals and have not created a national structure for animal protection, even though this was promised. According to him, a year ago, activists collected approximately 3 thousand signatures for the creation of the department, but the request was not resolved.
Olga Sirbu, another participant in the protest, believes that the lack of punishment for abandoning domestic animals exacerbates the problem. She advocates for their identification through a national registry and, possibly, through microchipping, so that owners who abandon them can be penalized.
The protesters have warned that, in the absence of a response from the authorities, they could organize a new protest action.
In a reaction, the Minister of Environment, Gheorghe Hajder, stated that the authorities are analyzing several options for creating a structure responsible for animal protection. According to him, the Government is set to make a decision in the upcoming period, after identifying an efficient solution and consulting with the interested parties.
