In Malaysia, social issues are often marginalized and ignored by the government. For instance, stray issues, poverty, homeless, illegal migrants, sex workers, human trafficking, refugees, you name it. All these aren’t taking into the consideration of the home ministry. They spent their time on propagating One Malaysia intended to promote unity of the citizens, but contradicted with itself, allowing the Islamic community to claim the right of using Allah.
Stray animals (Dogs and Cats) are a major issue in this country, and yet, even there is an animal abuse law in this country – Animal Act 1953 Part IV. The Local government body, often is the one who commits such crime and the citizens often are disempowered. The fact that, there is NO population control project was being discussed by the government (What local council often and normally does is, trap the dog, kill the dog violently) is even depressing.
Such situation resulting in a rising number of NGO that try to rescue dogs in their own way. Which could be problematic, In which, NGO often has their own policy of stray dog management and sometimes contradicted by the local law. For instance, NGO might break into houses in order to rescue dogs, which act as a rather extreme ‘animal activist’ way. Even that, it is understandable that, when government is not doing anything to assist the animal in this country, it drives people to the level that they could do whatever it takes to rescue dogs in terrible condition. Furthermore, different NGO has different ways of their own management, some could be quite aggressive, some could be quite disorganized, especially when they try to rescue dogs and disregard the social convention. After all, it is totally understandable that all of these NGO simply could not stand animal suffering from hunger, abused, disease and all kinds of terrible illness.
Even with all the limitation that citizens have, we are still trying to manage and construct a social NGO framework to work within smaller institutional/ government framework. It is amazing to observe how one NGO grows big enough to have massive supports from different countries across the world, but again, if all of these NGO arising from Malaysia could somehow centralize, it will then be so much efficient.
Other than government responsibility, studying in Nottingham Malaysia does get us to understand how a corporate/institution’s response to their corporate responsibility toward animal issues. For instance, personally, I think the management is at least responding in comparison to another institution. However, it is always ironic to see the effort of our campus management putting in to dog catching and release in other places, leaving stray dogs continue to be straying in other places, while we have another UK campus, that give out fund to spay dogs and take good care of animal welfare. To illustrate, one corporate should not dumb the things/animals that they do not want, to other places to let them overpopulating in the neighbour community. Worse, no tolerance of dogs on campus will then generate a stronger belief of dog hates, that further encourage students/staff to ‘dislike’ dogs. Which then possibly encourage further dog abuse on campus. Instead, what management should do, is to educate the students a way to coexist with stray dogs and create a dog/student friendly community. From the Nottingham Malaysia experience, I can imagine other corporation across Malaysia to simply dumb the stray dogs away from their area and let alone the neighbour community to face stray overpopulation issue.
What to expect, when we have both the corporate and government running from their responsibility to take care of the animal?
For Your information, UNMC Animal Welfare is another NGO, that work voluntarily from a group of students and lecturers who can’t stand puppies being kicked, hot water being poured on dogs, and decided to form a community to present to the students that. We, animal lover, are watching.
We are having out second recruitment drive meeting tomorrow
UNMC Animal Welfare Group 