Some months ago I received an e-mail from someone asking people to give support to a center for stray animals known as Noah's Ark Lodge. Apparently the land occupied by the center was leased from the Singapore government and the lease was about to end. The man who ran the place applied for an extension but was rejected and the e-mail was an appeal for public support for the extension appeal. I remember seeing somewhere in Noah's Ark Lodge's website that the Primary Production Department (PPD) cited the reason for not extending the lease as the need for ensuring 'best use of the land through the process of bidding'.
My thought then was that it was quite ridiculous to consider the extension solely on that basis. I therefore put in my little piece in Noah's Ark Lodge's website suggesting an appeal to PM Goh since he appear to me to be one who may 'have more in his heart than just making money'.
In today's Straits Times is a report that said that the current operator of Noah's Ark Lodge, a Raymond Wee, has 'lost the bid' for the land. An ex-pet shop owner, he setup the center because he wanted to have 'a more humane way of handling the strays other than to put them down". He had reportedly sold his shop house and spent $1.5 million dollars of his own money and the last 7 years running the center. The winning bidder is a pet businessman who will use the land for business and had offered to accommodate the stray animals as long contributions for their upkeep continue to come in. The chief executive of the Food and Veterinarian Authority of Singapore, a Mr Ngiam, was quoted as saying that 'other animal lovers concerned about the welfare of the animals can also help by adopting the animals and contributing to their upkeep'. I guess that was probably stated in light of public concern for the closure. Prompted by the news report, I took a look at Noah's Ark Lodge website today. In its message section are expressions of disappointment from some people and there were some really nasty messages with four letter words.
I was thinking about this whole story, the public official statements and what they really meant. It is clear that many people were saddened by what happened. And may be unable to reconcile the outcome to their hearts, some good intentioned people have resorted to foul languages to express their exasperation at the failure of a nation to make a difference for some helpless animals and to let a man with the willingness to help them to continue to do so.
It was clear that settling the issue by determining best use of a land by bidding meant that the land should go to one with the highest dollar return. It would not take much for anyone to appreciate that 'humanitarian' work cannot be valued the same way as running a business. Otherwise Mr Wee would have made instead of spent a million dollars doing it. Many people including GIC would be doing it! Surely they also do not expect the animals to earn their right to live as they have done for millions of years (and, unlike humans, taking only what they need and no more) by producing revenue for humans! When it is only fair that animals should have some right to a decent existence, we humans in our usual selfishness have somehow assumed that humans have the right to every inch of space on earth. After that, we in our arrogance try to insist that everything under the sky should follow the rules that some of us had dictated. Our insatiable greed concealed in nice sounding man-made concepts (and taught by governments and schools) like "free market" and "maximum returns" have blinded us to the fact that those concepts are not laws of nature. To top it up, when an issue like this concerning the life of other life forms should perhaps be a whole nation's concern, a public official obviously with some responsibility for wild-life has taken the presumptuous liberty to tell all his countrymen that it is essentially not his business. He probably does not realise that what he was really implying was that while a whole nation has collectively deprived other animals a space for continued survival only those few with the heart and desire to help the animals should pay for that 'robbery'.
When a country claiming to be a 'first world' nation with highly schooled people and top officials pegging their salaries to 'the best' cannot seem to appreciate the above, it is indeed a frightening future for the world.
Sent the above note to the Straits Times the day the report was published hoping that it will get onto their Forum page. They must have thought that I was being ridiculous. It was not printed.
A week after the news report, the message function in Noah's Ark Lodge website was closed. Message on the site was "We have also decided to close this message board. While there were many constructive and well intentioned feedbacks, there were also a lot of immatured, shallow and irresponsible messages. Perhaps it is due to the anonymity of the Internet, many had based their criticism on superficial observations. One or Two had been using this message board as a vehicle for personal attacks, hiding behind fake identities. No wonder it took the government so long to allow the "Speakers' Corner". Even then, judging from the messages on this "virtual soap box", we are probably still not quite ready for it yet."
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