Will the lives of street animals ever be safe?

                 Will the lives of street animals ever be safe?

Name- Lubaba Ruksat 

Student Id- 23201197

Section- M30

 As an animal lover it is heartbreaking for me to witness the horrifying state of street animals. There are about forty thousand stray dogs and countless stray cats in our country. And most of them spend their whole life eating garbage and getting beaten by people. Even though many NGOs and local people feed the animals, the amount of  support is way less than the number of animals living on the streets. Not to mention, the harsh behavior of people towards the street animals. 

Furthermore, the majority of street animals are malnourished. Their one of the only sources of food is garbage containers. And due to hunger they eat whatever they can swallow which can also be plastic and rocks, which is very harmful to them. Again, everyday more than a few animals get murdered or injured while passing the road. Despite the animal's life being shattered, the person escapes by giving just 100 taka at most. Which implies that the life of a whole living being is just 100 taka, that is just ruthless. Even though a person can be imprisoned for a maximum of 3 months for killing an animal, we all know that this law is not strictly maintained in our country. Comparatively, the street animals have no place to live, they don’t have any shed over their head. In the harsh summer of our country they can’t even find water to drink, let alone a shady place to cool off, or save themselves from heavy rain in the rainy season. As a result they find shelter under cars or bushes, some even sleep under the open sky because they have nowhere to go.

In addition, The majority of people in our society consider stray animals to be terrifying creatures that should be kept a dozen feet away or they will bite them. However, Stray animals are just as harmless as humans are, they will only bother people if people bother them. Unfortunately, the people of our country do not try to understand that. The children are taught to fear the stray animals by their parents which turns into some kind of hatred towards them when they grow up. Which results in street animals getting abandoned. Again, some pet owners get tired of their pets or if the pet gets sick, they leave them on the roadside, the pet which is not accustomed to the harsh environment passes away in distress. Thus, it can be said that street animals in no means are harmful. They are the ones who are afraid of people due to how people treat them.

To give these street animals a better life it is very important to spread awareness about this matter on a bigger scale. For example-  through TV ads or social media ads. But most importantly the government should take strict measures to ensure the safety of stray animals and also shelter of the stray animals. For example- The  Thailand government made foldable shelters for stray animals from repurposed billboards. It is also important to decrease the number of street animals specially stray cats through neutering the cats instead of killing them to avoid an uncontrollable amount of stray animals on the street. Hope by implementing these methods we can secure a better and healthy life for the street animals.