News from the battlefronts …

0

Battling rabies with mass vaccinations for pets.

AT the moment, Sarawak seems to be fighting on four fronts:

The battle of Serian, against stray dogs;

The battle of the rivers, against crocodiles;

The battle in the courts, against leaseholders;

And the great sea battle, against foreign fishermen.

 

Really, we need a Nelson and a Napoleon to win them all!

Dogs and rabies

Sarawak has lost several precious human lives to rabies. Although they are personal losses, family affairs, yet they are a loss to the big Sarawakian family. Our hearts are with all those family members of the victims during their bereavement.

To stop the spread of rabies carried by infected dogs to other parts of the state, appropriate measures are being taken by the authorities. Good. More importantly, further measures are necessary. One method is to cull all the unlicensed dogs, and ensure that licensed, ‘owned’ dogs are vaccinated. Some people advocate rounding up strays and sending them to centres, such as the one at Kota Sentosa in Kuching. But that will put all the canines already there at risk of infection – how do we know a seemingly healthy stray isn’t already infected?

While measures are being taken by the authorities to stop the spread of the disease, the duty of dog owners in Serian, Kuching, Sibu, or Miri, is to keep their dogs safe from rabies, by taking their pets to the local vets regularly. Most dog owners are considerate people – they get their pets registered with the local authority.

Still, in general, many dogs pose a problem for people who live in a housing estate; if you live there, you owe a duty to your neighbours to be considerate of their feelings. Dogs can keep a whole district awake all night with their ceaseless barking. Think of the babies and the sick grandmothers or grandfathers in the vicinity.

The barks from your Bobby are a nuisance to them. As good neighbours, they are keeping quiet because they do not want to create any trouble. In their heart of hearts, however, they are wishing that the noisy dogs drop dead, pronto!

To reduce the number of stray dogs in the neighbourhood, it takes courage for the local authorities to apply the relevant bylaws without fear or favour. Look at the old ordinance (Local Authority Ordinance 1948) where it was once provided that, “Any person, being the owner or person in charge of any animal, allows such animal to stray upon any public road or upon any property in the ownership or control of a local authority or the federal or state government shall be guilty of an offence.” Use this bylaw.

Crocodile-human conflict

We have lost a number of lives to crocodiles since the coming into effect in the state the Wild Life Ordinance 1998 and its link with Cites (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). For so many years now, we have been unable to wriggle ourselves out of this quagmire, a situation created by the population boom of the crocodiles in the state. Although we are now free to amend the existing legislation that binds ourselves hand and foot, we have not done so, for reasons best known to the authorities concerned. To the rest of us, this is a curiosity – a strange situation indeed, after all the trouble of having gone to South Africa and getting the green light from Cites to pull down our crocs to where they rightly belong – down to Appendix II. And yet there’s been no splash of news about a large scale culling of the vermin.

To those of us who do not understand the rationale of allowing the crocodile population to grow and grow, there are two possibilities: persuade the crocs to practise contraception (not likely to work), and cull those large enough to pose a danger to mankind. If anyone wants to buy crocodile meat and skin, go ahead and sell. But apparently, this problem is not as simple as I first thought.

Against the vermin of the rivers is several-faceted warfare – between those in favour of rearing crocodiles and protecting them as scavengers in the rivers versus those who advocate for the culling and the sale of the product of the crocodiles as well as those with vested economic interests – a three-cornered tug of war.

This may be a reason for the delay in the authorities taking definitive action to reduce the growing population of crocodiles in our rivers. They will find a solution to this problem somehow. Just wait – don’t start hunting the crocs without the permission of the wildlife warden. You are not an endangered species, the crocs are.

Loss of land rights

And the third loss is in terms of land rights – a loss to the landowners who have become squatters on their own land. To the rest of the community, this is not only a loss of face but more importantly it is a loss of confidence in the authorities in carrying out their fiduciary duties to protect their rights. I’m sad. The fight over the land rights is a long haul – legal, cultural, political and economic – involving powerful vested interests. The indigenous landowners may have to be prepared for a long and protracted struggle before they can claim rights over certain parts of their lands. Giving up is no option.

Loss of exclusive fishing rights

I wrote about this last week – complaining why we were keeping quiet over the theft of our natural resources by foreign fishermen. Since then I have received some responses, both positive and negative, to my appeal for a protest against such daylight robbery. The authorities may be mulling over some action to take; of this we know little about. They will do it their way – diplomatic way.

The battle for the retention of exclusive rights to our waters is quiet – maybe a diplomatic battle, not gunboat style. We shall be informed of the outcome, of course, in a diplomatic manner – a situation not unlike a calm sea before the landas.

In all these battles – against rabies-carrying dogs, crocodiles, leaseholders, and foreign fishermen, we can only entertain hope to seeing an end to each one of them as soon as possible. The power and the authority are all in the hands of the government of the day.

We shall wait and see.

Comments can reach the writer via [email protected].