Friday 3 July 2009

Moments with Charlie

Charlie McKillop is back at ABC Far North, filling in occasionally for Fiona Sewell on the morning programme.

The other morning she was having a natter to a lovely lady from Animal Welfare.

Animal Welfare, who have been around since 1987, help those on low income to care for their pets.

"In the current economic climate, the need for an organisation such as Animal Welfare has grown to encompass peoples from all walks of life, from older pensioners to the unemployed, to the disabled and those who have for company only their pet," Valerie Smyth says.

However, Cairns Regional Council has removed funding support this year for the Welfare's hugely popular desexing programme.

Charlie was talking about the stray animals and the impact they have on the community. She was talking about the valuable work Animal Welfare and YAPS do in the community, when she confused her acronyms.

"The RSL have a lot of pets, I mean YAPS," Charlie quickly corrected her slip up. The RSL do indeed have many old pets. Maybe she was thinking about those that needed early euthanizing and de-sexing?

Animal Welfare is entirely run through donations and sales from goods sold at their second hand store at 382 Draper Street. Their charity shop in Sheridan Street was closed recently because the rent was too much to sustain.

2 comments:

Lillian at Yorkeys said...

Great idea of CRC to remove funding for the desexing programme in time of economic strife - already people are surrendering their pets to YAPS & RSPCA as they can't afford them due to unemployment, or, have had to change accomodation to somewhere that doesn't take pets. Awfully sad.
Yet another reason to email our fair Councillors over the weekend? That defunding would have to be one of the most stupid 'cost-cutting' measures ever.

FNQ Watermelon said...

Wonder where they redirected the money to blakeys pockets no doubt!