Municipal Affairs Bureau (IAM) President José Maria da Fonseca Tavares said yesterday that his bureau was paying “very close” attention to a spate of recent cases in which a number of cats were believed to have been tortured to death.
Tavares made the remarks while speaking to reporters at the Public Administration Building in Rua do Campo after a closed-door meeting of the Legislative Assembly Electoral Affairs Commission (CAEAL) – which is tasked with overseeing this year’s direct and indirect legislative elections – of which he is a member.
Tavares urged witnesses of the animal cruelty to contact the bureau.
“Cats and dogs cannot speak, and the bureau can only implement the Animal Protection Law after gathering [sufficient] evidence,” Tavares said.
Tavares said that thanks to photos and video clips provided by residents, his bureau fined a dozen cat or dog abuse offenders last year, including several ones in which the offenders tied up cats or dogs for a long time but did not feed them.
According to the Animal Protection Law, animal abuse carries a fine of between 20,000 and 100,000 patacas, whereas animal cruelty is punishable by imprisonment of up to one year. Animal abuse refers to treating animals cruelly or violently, which inflicts pain and suffering on them, while animal cruelty refers to causing the serious physical disability or death of animals after treating them cruelly or violently.
The bureau announced last month a case in which the carcasses of five cats were found lying on the podium of a building of Ocean Gardens in Taipa in December. The five cats were believed to have “fallen from height to death” onto the podium.
The bureau announced on Saturday last week that the carcasses of three cats were found in a back alley in Iao Hon district earlier that day – a pregnant cat and two female kittens. The bureau announced on Tuesday that three more cat carcasses were found in an inner alley in the same district earlier that day.
The bureau has transferred the three cases to the police for further investigation. The police have launched investigations into the three cases based on the suspected crime of animal cruelty listed in the Animal Protection Law.
Property management companies’ duty
Tavares said that his bureau was unable to continue investigating the case in Ocean Gardens as the residential estate’s property management company only reported it to his bureau over half a month after the incident, because of which IAM staff members were unable to collect evidence at the scene. “We could not even find the cat carcasses,” he said, underlining that the Municipal Affairs Bureau has not shelved the case, adding that the bureau would re-launch the investigation if residents provide it with “new clues”.
Tavares said that the residential estate’s property management company should have reported the case to his bureau right after the five carcasses were found, instead of having “disposed of the carcasses itself”.
Tavares promised that his bureau will raise property management companies’ awareness about their responsibility to always report animal death cases to the Municipal Affairs Bureau.
1 more cat carcass found yesterday
Meanwhile, the bureau announced in a statement late last night that another cat carcass was found in a back alley in Iao Hon district yesterday.
According to the statement, the police informed the bureau last night of the case, in which the cat was bleeding on the head. IAM staff members have preliminarily concluded that the cat had died a short time ago, whose carcass has meanwhile been taken to the IAM kennel for autopsy.
The statement said that the bureau didn’t know whether yesterday’s case was related to the district’s recent cases.
