Extracted from straitstimes interactive
Sep 6, 2006
IN TAMPINES
Cat lovers up in arms
Dispute over town council's culling of strays
By Tan Hui Yee
A GROUP of Tampines residents who look after stray cats there are up in arms over the town council's culling programme, which they claim is breaking an agreement the council made not to target sterilised cats.
More than 20 cat lovers met Tam- pines GRC MP Mah Bow Tan on Monday to express their concern.
Last month, the council struck an agreement with the cat lovers group not to cull sterilised cats for six months. In return, the cat lovers pro- mised to look into complaints about stray cats in their neighbourhood for six months.
Since the agreement was struck, the Tampines cat lovers say they have spent about $2,000 sterilising about 100 cats in their neighbourhood.
But on Friday, one member of the group, 20-year-old Rebecca Ho, said she saw the town council's pest control contractor trying to trap at least three sterilised cats for culling.
Outraged, the group turned up at Mr Mah's Meet-the-People session on Monday night, where he promised to look into their concerns. The National Development Minister later told The Straits Times: 'I need to balance their interests with the interests of those who feel very aggrieved at the cats which are creating a nuisance.'
According to Tampines Town Council's general manager, Mr Leong Shee Wing, it routinely culls cats when it gets complaints. From January to July, he said, the council received 139 complaints and caught 148 cats.
He said yesterday that its contractor had been told to trap only unsterilised cats. The council said the contractor had recently caught one sterilised cat by accident, but subsequently released it. tanhy@sph.com.sg