The last year’s report of NIK showed how imperfect the homeless animal welfare in Poland is. A lot of cats and dogs disappear after they are caught by dogcatchers. Nobody can tell what happens to them because there is no effective animal identification system in place. The existing animal shelters are overfilled: every fourth animal dies there. As much as 86 percent of institutions audited by NIK did not provide decent living conditions to animals under their care.
Catching animals and creating pseudo-shelters has become a lucrative business for some people. This is proven both by the press and reports of non-governmental organisations. Local governments pay money to private companies to care for homeless cats and dogs but - as NIK has revealed – a half of audited municipalities did not monitor the fate of animals delivered to the shelter. The local governments spent 80 percent of all money earmarked for animal welfare. As a result, more than 60 percent of audited municipalities had the animals caught without guaranteeing them places in the shelters for which they had no money. Since the dogs were not microchipped, it opened the way to kill them or put them in overcrowded animal shelters that did not always provide proper conditions.
NIK for homeless animals
NIK highlighted essential law changes in its report. De lege ferenda proposals included the following:
- the statutes should provide for an obligation to register and microchip dogs so that it is possible to follow the fate of caught animals, check if they stay in a shelter and when they were adopted. The lack of microchips with dogs made it possible for dishonest entrepreneurs to get rid of caught dogs before transporting them to an animal shelter or to kill them there;
- there should be a legal provision enabling an entity to run an animal shelter on the condition of meeting all necessary requirements (confirmed by the veterinary inspection);
- in contracts with dogcatchers, municipalities should specify to which animal shelters the caught animals should go. Also contracts between local governments and the shelters should precisely define animal welfare requirements as well as audits to be conducted by the municipalities;
- the act should change the obligation of protection against animals (which resulted in catching cats and dogs which could not find places in the shelters) into an obligation to care about homeless animals (which is going to make the catching only the first stage in the welfare provision process that will end in putting that animal in a shelter and adopting it);
- municipal programmes for homeless animal welfare should be made local law acts (which is going to give them legal power; at the same time, it will enable making local authorities account for the execution of law).
The Parliamentary Committee for Animal Welfare is just finishing its works on the amendments of acts and ordinances where it wants to use e.g. all the key proposals of NIK. Committee Chair Paweł Suski informed NIK President Krzysztof Kwiatkowski of that fact. A few months ago, the President of the Polish SAI presented in the Sejm the key findings of NIK concerning the homeless animal welfare in Poland. The Head of NIK talked with the Marshals of the Sejm and Senate as well as the heads of several key parliamentary committees about the implementation of de lege ferenda proposals. The amendments of law proposed by NIK are a chance for better homeless animal welfare.
