DM campaign to curb illegal online pet trade

The move is part of the veterinary services section's keenness on public health and animal health in the emirate.

The veterinary services section of the Dubai Municipality's public health services department is carrying out a big campaign to eliminate the phenomenon of illegal online trade of animals through websites and social networking sites. The municipality has already communicated with owners of these sites and informed them of their violation of the laws and regulations governing these activities. The move is part of the veterinary services section's keenness on public health and animal health in the emirate. 
Mohammed Yousuf Al Hammadi, acting head of the veterinary services section, stated the communication with the violators is only the first phase. "The second stage will be to send the list of violating sites to the legal affairs department of the municipality to be sent to the Dubai Police Cybercrime Department to permanently close these sites," he said.
Al Hammadi stated that the municipality and the economic department had warned all violators and unauthorised social networking users that the punishment would be harsh, but to no avail.
He added that the section has recently received many complaints from the public regarding the behaviour of these violators. "Since they do not have any commercial licences for their work, the section cannot issue fines on them and chase them legally without them obtaining commercial licences." 
Al Hammadi warned the public not to deal with these violating individuals, even if their prices are cheap as the consequences are always severe and big. He noted that most of these sites take the name of of Dubai as a means of promoting their activities because they know that Dubai has a good reputation globally. " Most of these people do not have landline phone numbers, so they just put their mobile numbers on these sites and use statements that all their profits go to animal welfare organisations and they do not work for profit but want to save animals only, but it is the opposite," said Al Hammadi.
He added that the emirate has many licensed companies that carry out veterinary activities and all are under the supervision of the veterinary services section of the Dubai Municipality. 
Al Hammadi also appealed to the public to cooperate with the veterinary services section and immediately report any site that carries out veterinary activities without the licence from the municipality, such as selling pets, selling animal food, transporting animals, offering day-to-day care of pets or providing centres for accommodating pets.
reporters@khaleejtimes.com
 

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