TWO DOGS COVERED IN TAR AND 'THROWN AWAY' IN GARBAGE BINS - with update from Paphos Municipality

 Filenews 26 July 2021-  by Maria Porphyriou

Another incident of animal abuse occurred last night in the Paphos area.

In particular, volunteers from a shelter in the area were confronted with an unprecedented incident after finding two puppies dumped in a trash can in a black bag covered in black tar.

The shelter's volunteers responded immediately and fought an all-night battle to save the two unfortunate dogs. According to photos posted on the shelter's official page, the dogs were carefully cleaned from the tar, bathed and are now in the safe hands of volunteers, where they rest.

In fact, this abhorrent incident took on a huge extent, with hundreds of comments of anger flooding the post, while among others the Mayor of Paphos, Phaedon Phaedon, said that he would examine this particular incident himself.

Animal Party raises questions

In a statement, the "Cyprus Animal Party" asks the police and the Municipality of Paphos "to investigate the incident with all the seriousness it deserves". At the same time it raises some questions:

The Cyprus Animal Party was informed yesterday (Sunday 25/7/2021) that two dogs had been thrown out of a shelter in Paphos, live in garbage bags of the Municipality of Paphos.

The dogs were smeared with bitumen. It's in honour of the volunteers who really fought to save the two dogs. Their efforts have brought a positive result and are now safe. Now how safe they are and what may have caused the dogs this whole situation will be seen in the next.

The Cyprus Animal Party is asking the police and the Municipality of Paphos to investigate this incident with all the seriousness it deserves. The questions that arise are as below:

1. The Municipality of Paphos informed us that the dogs were found by a citizen lying in the asphalt that had been used for asphalt work. Why wasn't the area marked and sheltered so that we wouldn't mourn human victims? Anyone could have accessed even children.
2. The citizen who found them, why did he throw them out of the shelter and why did he use bags from the Municipality of Paphos?
3. Why didn't the Citizen take any action for the immediate rescue, such as alerting the fire brigade to the animals? Valuable time was lost and if the volunteers did not act immediately the dogs today would have died.
4. Why aren't the dogs tagged? What is the Municipality of Paphos doing with regard to the issue of the registration of all dogs in Paphos and indeed with the free government labelling program?

The Cyprus Animal Party will await the immediate actions of the Municipality of Paphos and police.

UPDATE FROM PAPHOS MUNICIPALITY:

The Municipality of Paphos has no involvement in relation to the incident with the dogs, according to a statement from the Municipality of Paphos.

Referring to the events "to avoid any misinterpretation and to remedy the facts" in relation to the case of the two small dogs found last night covered in tar in the area of the Municipal Wholesale Market, the Municipality of Paphos, after examining the incident, clarifies that early last night, unknown persons emptied a barrel of tar onto the ground, resulting in two dogs probably wandering in the area to get stuck in it.

The cries of the dogs were heard by a perishable trader, who maintains storage space in the Market and rushed with his two children to the scene where he saw the two animals struggling to free themselves from the tar.

Acting immediately, the perishable dealer and his children released the puppies and after placing them on black bags of the Municipality of Paphos, which they located near the scene, they immediately transferred them to the Pafiakos Animal Protection Association in order to receive proper care. Please note that the Municipality of Paphos is contracted with the Association for the purposes of such services.

The Municipality of Paphos strongly condemns the action of some reckless people to deliberately or not empty the tar barrel on the ground, putting the lives of the two small dogs at immediate risk.

Such actions, if they are found to have been carried out deliberately, are added to the communication and constitute a criminal act for which the perpetrators must be held to account before the courts.

The Municipality of Paphos calls on the Police to investigate this serious incident as soon as possible and to take all steps to fully investigate it.