WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT!!
The team of our organization conducted a monitoring visit to the Qendra per Trajtim te Kafsheve QTK (Centre for animal treatment) in Harilaq on February 5, 2019.
The QTK center is contracted by the Municipality of Pristina with the tender entitled “Treatment of stray dogs”, with tender number: 616-18-7726-2-2-1.
The responsibilities of this center are to catch dogs, to castrate / sterilize, vaccinate them, and release them again in the location where caught (CNVR).
The value contracted by the Municipality of Pristina to them is 100,000 euros, while the value for the treatment per dog is 100,00 euro. Of course, this money is public money of taxpayers of the Republic of Kosovo.
This center has enough space and funds (more than enough) to do a great job; but instead, due to the lack of proper monitoring mechanisms as foreseen by the applicable law and of a genuine contract to protect the welfare of animals to the maximum and to monitor the use of public money, this center decides to experiment on dogs for which the veterinarians in charge at QTK for castration / sterilization do not at all care, especially for their so non-professional work done.
Below we list the legal and contractual violations we have found by only one visit:
1. An absolute absence of hygiene (even of the surgical equipment).
Each dog was operated with the same surgical equipment; Veterinarians and “outlawed practitioners” did not even have sterile gloves and proper clothing as the veterinary profession requires.
2. In the pictures you can see that high school students were attending and doing the operations – this is a direct violation of the veterinary law no. 2004/21, the Animal Care Act no. 02 / L-10 and the Administrative Instruction 04/2017.
It is all rights for the university students to observe surgeries or practice to learn about castration and sterilization of dogs, who under law and university curricula are permitted to do so; in the other hand it is totally wrong that some high school students in the agriculture school do the surgeries and practice on dogs. Dogs are not experimental subjects for children, nor for veterinarians employed at the QTK, who are also the teachers of the high school of agriculture “Abdyl Frashëri” in Pristina.
3. The dogs were moved from one location to another and also during the castration, without any professional care; they were being treated as things and not as living beings (though under anesthesia).
4. Even though enough space in the center, QTK’s did not even have an extra table for the pre-operational preparations. As seen in the picture, the fur of the dog was shaved in the ground so unprofessionally and unethically. Please notice how teachers are teaching their students to work: by doing work that is not lawful and doing a job violating any legal and veterinary medicine practice.
5. According to the veterinarians employed in QTK, dogs were kept in the center for 2 weeks after the castration/sterilizations. In the administrative instruction 04/2017, dogs should be kept at the latest 5 days from the day of the operation. The animal needs to be kept more if there is pain after surgery or not immediate recovery after 5 days.
We now understand though, the reason why dogs are kept so long there. It is because the operations were done very fast and without any professional care. We are not surprised that the dogs do not recover from the pain and castration even after 14 days.
6. Operations were done very quickly by the above-mentioned high school students. Veterinary experts from the world confirm that a proper operation in male dogs lasts about 15-20 minutes, while female dogs, 35-45 minutes. We do not know how in Kosovo, dogs are being operated for 5 minutes? And that, even from a high school student? The only reasonable explanation from other professional veterinarians we consulted was that genuine castration has not been done and that the treatment of dogs in that way can have severe health consequences for the dogs afterwards. As seen in the picture, dogs are suffering a lot and are at risk of dying a few weeks after castration or sterilization.
7. One of the veterinarians there, joked about animal abuse, which is quite a thing to be worried about. When we asked the children (high school students) present whether they like this profession and the animals, the veterinarian who also is their teacher, without letting the students respond, joked that “If we find its head, in order to give them a swipe (meaning to the dog)”; translating this from Albanian means as saying that “loving the animals” was not the case but finding somehow the head of the dog in order to punch it. We are convinced that such behaviors should not be acceptable in any environment and especially in environments in which there are practitioners of veterinary or human medicine. This is how the teachers teach about the ethics of the veterinary practice to children and students.
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Both, the Municipality of Pristina and the Food and Veterinary Agency should take concrete and punitive steps for these legal violations.
We’ve had meetings with the Municipality of Pristina, respectively with the project contract managers of the project above mentioned. All contract managers are notified of these irregularities, but nothing has yet been undertaken.
According to the legislation in force, the complainants or plaintiffs must be notified by the institutional bodies receiving the complaints or reports of legal violations, of any measure taken or not taken by them in regard to the problem that the citizens as complainants have addressed to them. On the contrary, we did not get anything from the contract managers nor from the Procurement Office of the Municipality of Pristina.
Everyone in this country seems to play with their citizens, their taxpayers (public funds), the animals and their well-being.
Our visit was also accompanied by Mr. Taraku, who is the National Coordinator in Kosovo for the stray dog projects, who was selected last year by the Prime Minister of Kosovo.
Above all, even Mr. Arsim Arifi, Head of Sector of Veterinary Inspection from the Food and Veterinary Agency, was informed about everything, but the latter does not react either to any of the law and contract violation.