We thank TV Prizreni for reporting on the situation with stray dogs.
During the initial interviews we heard citizens’ complaints and fears from stray dogs as some stray dogs become aggressive. If there are aggressive dogs in our country, it’s because the abuse towards them has increased. Dogs do not become aggressive by themselves but by the negative external circumstances that in most cases humans cause them. The gentler and more understanding we are towards them, the calmer and gentler they will be with us.
During the interviews in this report, the Director of the Association of Kosovo Municipalities (AKM) was also interviewed and we inform all citizens with great concern that some of the statements of the AKM do not stand and they must be completed very urgently as it can mislead the society.
It is said by AKM that “there already is a strategy” and that we have enough “written documents” on this issue, but allegedly the only thing that lacks is implementation. This does not stand because the Republic of Kosovo does not possess and has never possessed an official strategic document with all the necessary measures to manage the problem with stray dogs and to manage the source of the problem of stray dogs, which are precisely the owners and their dogs that end up abandoned on the street.
We remind the AKM that Municipalities have a legal obligation to address this issue, not just KFVA.
The strategy that allegedly exists according to the AKM, is a project proposal that was made in 2016 for the then Government led by Mr. Ramush Haradinaj and who had allocated the budget for CNVR (catch, neuter, vaccination, release), exactly as proposed by AKM. This means that, implementation existed after all for the project that AKM has proposed since then. AKM knows very well why the project proposed by them and that was implemented by the FVA in 2018 at the national level, is considered a failure because the number of dogs on the street now remains the same or even larger than in 2018 when the project had started.
It is strange how AKM was never engaged in monitoring the project in question. We too are just a NGO and we were interested in how public money is being spent and how stray dogs are being treated during all phases of the project.
We remind AKM that exactly because the 2018 project has shown shortcomings in many aspects, our organization has constantly worked to improve the standard of treatment of stray dogs with CNVR procedures. Precisely because of unsustainable proposals in the past, we have the same or even worse situation.
Another thing was incorrectly emphasized by AKM in this report, when they commented on the working group established by the Ministry of Local Government Administration (MLGA), saying that “a job is being done twice” because the FVA within a project of EU is making such a strategy. This is not true at all because the work between the MLGA working group and the FVA is being coordinated extremely well thanks to the tireless work of our organization – which has an important role in establishing institutional cooperation to address this problematic. Our organization believes that only with cross-sectoral cooperation, the problem of stray dogs will be improved.
A workshop will be held on 5 and 6 May to finalize the draft national strategy that an expert engaged in an EU project (for and in cooperation with the FVA) has proposed. That is, both MLGA and FVA are in full coordination in this regard.
Almost 2 years ago, neither the FVA nor any other institution thought of a strategic approach to the situation with stray dogs and we are happy that the country’s institutions have finally come together to define accurately the steps to be followed o move towards improvement of the situation.