An Appeal to the Hearts and Minds of Everyone!
Diseases. Over the last few weeks, Visakhapatnam has been impacted by heavy rains that have led to severe flooding, saturating the ground, and filling up all the poorly-constructed municipal drains with a heavy flow of water at our shelters. Our staff and all animals residing with us are facing extreme weather conditions, and the water-logged areas are breeding grounds for mosquitoes and mould. Mosquitoes can cause the spread of dangerous diseases like dengue, zika, and malaria. Moulds can cause the animal feed to spoil. These are unhealthy conditions for our people and animals.
Illnesses. It is unfortunate that despite our best efforts of moving our animals to higher areas to keep them safe from floods, we lost an older cow to hypothermia. She lived at the shelter for many years and was loved by everyone in our team. We get attached to our animals and it is heartbreaking when they leave us earlier than anticipated.
ABC Programme. At VSPCA, we truly believe in the importance of our Animal Birth Control Programme. In spite of the challenges we have faced in the last couple of months, we are striving to be prepared for other natural disasters foreseen as threats to our animals and staff members. We continue to provide emergency services to distressed animals as well as, we have made more progress with our ABC (Animal Birth Control) Programme. Rain or shine, we cannot allow street animals to suffer or breed recklessly. The main goal for our ABC Programme is to limit the number of street dogs bred, which in turn reduces the number of human-animal conflicts.
Climate change is a real threat. We are starting to see the effects of climate change all over the world, and certainly in our city. The fast turnaround from drought-like conditions to extreme wet conditions is extremely damaging. Over the last decade, we are seeing drastic and terrifying seasonal changes, with erratic and unpredictable weather conditions.
Poor infrastructure. Following the last spell of heavy rains, government officials visited our shelter to inspect the damage that could have been avoided had they allocated the necessary funds to construct a bridge, as advised by engineers. Instead, they left the rainwater flow to the mercy of small and inadequate piping. After seeing the damage done to our shelter, the government officials have agreed to correct the error in the drain system.
Retrofitting city facility infrastructures. We understand that weather conditions will continue to be dangerous in the future, and are preparing our shelter and sanctuary at VSPCA to withstand such challenges. Despite planning for the future, these unprecedented storms tell us that now we need even more retrofitting than we could have ever anticipated in the last five years. We are consistently making efforts to maintain our infrastructure and take additional measures for the safety of our employees and animals. Restoration work at our shelters is a top priority for us. We are calling on our well-wishers, donors, supporters, and animal lovers to help us during difficult times. Ensuring VSPCA’s future also indirectly ensures our city residents’ better health, as VSPCA takes care of a multitude of animal issues across the whole region.
Whatever you can donate to VSPCA—your time, funds, and in-kind donations, (medicines, feed, clothing/blankets, equipment) are all welcome. Cash donations will help repair damages making the single animal shelter in the city, strong and long-lasting. The future holds many natural calamities that can eventually hurt us all.
We understand this message is a complex one – but this is an earnest plea to help us safeguard our city and our animals.
Here is an assessment of the losses due to the incessant flooding :
- Loss of working capital:
- 7 tons of grass/hay feed: INR 21,000 (USD 257.00)
- 30 bags of rice: INR 24,000 (USD 294.00)
- 14 bags of special feed for large animals: INR 25,900 (USD 317.00)
- 5 large cooking utensils: INR 26,000 (318.00)
- 3 cement bags: INR 1,500 (USD 19.00)
- Sand: INR 20,000 (USD 245.00)
- Total: INR 1,18,400 (USD 1450.00)
- Loss of fixed assets (repairs and maintenance required due to continuous rain and flooding):
- 24 cement flakes: INR 48,000 (USD 588.00)
- Repairs to kennels: INR 5,75,000 (USD 7043.00)
- Repairs for ground floors, roads at ABC area, kennels area, goshala area: INR 20,00,000 (USD 24495.00)
- Total: INR 26,23,000 (USD 32125.00)
- Total for loss of working capital and loss of fixed assets: INR 27,41,400 (USD 33575.00)