Unwanted. A surge in the number of cast-off animals in Uzbekistan.

Animal rights activists in Uzbekistan have noticed a manifold increase in the number of pets left by their owners on the street during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is what Iroda Matkarimova, the founder of the «Hayot» shelter for homeless animals, speaks about.

«Before quarantine, the animal control from the Tashkent region trucked in up to 15 dogs a week to the shelter, but now «Hayot» accepts such a number in a single day and already houses more than 1000 animals, ” says the animal rights activist.

«People throw out all kinds of highbred dogs, whether it be a small Chihuahuas or large Alabai. These dogs have collars. Dogs aren’t just left outside. One dog was brought to the entry way and tied to the first door handle on the first floor.» says Iroda Matkarimova.

Clinics affiliated with the shelter are overflowing with sick dogs that were abandoned by their owners for fear of contracting Covid-19. When cases of coronavirus infection in pets were confirmed, people began to throw their pets away.

Just within a month, rehoming of dogs has nearly stopped. If earlier the shelter managed to find a home for 5-20 animals a week, during the quarantine only 2 dogs from «Hayot» found their new owners. 5 more dogs found on the streets of Tashkent were taken into pet boarding service. “If it goes on like this, I don’t know how many dogs there will be in the shelter,” the owner of “Hayot” worries. "In addition, the shelter is experiencing difficulties with resupplying the food for animals and has gone into debt due to the fact that the poultry farms are out of business, and there are ongoing problems with payments due to inconvenient payment methods”.

Timur Aripov, a chairman of the executive committee of the “Mehr va Oqibat” Animal Welfare Society, confirmed that the society began to regularly receive complaints from citizens that they saw abandoned animals on the street. He added that in the Fergana region there is an order from the authorities to exterminate stray dogs.

In doing so, he referred to a resident of the city of Kuvasay, Fergana region, who reported how an employee of the public utilities board scattered poison for animals in front of her and her great-grandson, caught a dog, strangled it, and threw it into a garbage truck.

“After that, the driver turned on the mechanism, and the animal was drawn into the garbage shredder alive” said the pensioner. In the public utilities board, she was told that "in connection with the coronavirus, they have an order from above to exterminate everything that moves," Aripov says.

Tashkent, 24.04.2020

The original text in Russian was translated into English by Eva Kim @evathemagister

Source: asiaplustj.info