BAGUIO CITY – Mayor Benjamin B. Magalong directed the City Veterinary Office to conduct an aggressive month-long campaign against stray dogs in the city’s 128 barangays to ensure residents confine their dogs in their backyards.
The new local chief executive also ordered the concerned department to study the possibility of significantly increasing the penalties for owners of stray dogs to force them to confine their dogs in their homes or backyards instead of allowing their pets to loiter along roads posing serious threats to the public passing through where the dogs often play and scatter their animal waste.
He agreed to the request of City Veterinarian Dr. Brigit P. Piok for the rehiring of job orders to compose another team of impounders that will around day and night to impound stray dogs that loiter in the city’s barangays.
“We have to ensure a sustained and aggressive campaign against stray dogs in all the barangays to make sure residents confine their dogs inside their houses and backyards and prevent them from inconveniencing the public,” Mayor Magalong stressed.
Piok claimed the local government has currently one team of impounders as the job order contracts of members of another team helping in impounding stray dogs are expiring.
According to him, the aggressive campaign against stray dogs will start in Purok 17, Irisan and the same will be replicated in other barangays to rid the roads and streets of stray dogs for the safety of the public.
Magalong instructed the City Veterinary Office to consider conducting their operations at night so that all stray dogs will be impounded and for the owners to learn their lesson and confine their pets inside their houses and backyards to prevent the scattering of their waste along streets and public places.
Magalong also sought the cooperation of barangay officials in the aggressive campaign against stray dogs to maximise the results of the said campaign which should be felt by most people the soonest possible time.
Piok disclosed the dogs that will be impounded will be brought to the common impounding area within the Slaughterhouse compound for the owners to retrieve.
Magalong claimed dogs that will no longer be claimed by the owners will be euthanized and buried in the identified common burial ground of euthanized animals.
Irisan punong barangay Arthur Carlos and Asin punong barangay Candido Jaime assured their support to the pronouncement of the local chief executive for the City Veterinary Office to immediately launch a month-long aggressive campaign against stray dogs in all the city’s barangays to help in clearing the roads and streets of dog manure that are an eyesore to residents and visitors alike.
Documents for the hiring of the job order impounders will be finalized the soonest and submitted to the city mayor for signing to guarantee the immediate reactivation of the second impounding team to carry out the marching orders.
By Dexter A. See