City councils need to remove dead dogs from streets

day, many people feel bad because they know that they will go through the same environmental nuisance—stinking bloated dead dogs.

I have always wondered why day in day out we face this problem of dead dogs on our roads and unattended to. The first day you notice the dead dog just freshly killed by a passing by vehicle. The next day you notice the dog is still there, on the same spot, unattended to. And this time it’s bloated.

A bloated dog is a swollen up dead dog, especially the abdomen due to initial swelling of intestines and stomach due to continuous activity of microorganisms which produce gas as a by-product while the animal is dead. The animal being dead cannot defend its organs from the attack of the same microorganisms which were considered harmless while the animal was still alive. And you know that the animal is mostly composed of protein matter. And talking about decomposition of protein matter, scientifically known as putrefaction, produces one of the most offensive smells.

Up to the third day, people find the dog still on the same spot. By this time, putrefaction will have set in, exposing all the people passing by, whether by car or walking, to very offensive smell. If those in cars feel like hell, I fear for those walking because they are exposed to this nauseating smell for a longer period of time. I am sure a good number of people puke (vomit) as a result of this. Now vomiting is not fun, that’s a sign of sickness. In other words, these dead putrefying dogs in our city roads make people sick, thereby injurious to their health.

And there are those who think they are clever. When their dog dies, instead of burying it, they dump the dog into other people’s neighbourhood. This is a very unfair behaviour.

But, I have been asking myself. Is there no institution responsible for removing these dead dogs from our streets? Since I understand this to be a public health nuisance, I had an idea that this should surely be covered somewhere in the Public Health Act. And I have an answer; Local authorities are responsible for removing these dogs and spare us from exposure to these offensive and injurious putrefactive smells from dead dogs.

Part IX of the Public Health Act Cap. 34.01 of the Laws of Malawi, stipulates the prohibited nuisances, one of which is described in paragraph 62 as: “any street, road or any part thereof ……so foul or in such a state or so situated or constructed as to be offensive or to be likely to injurious or dangerous to health”.

To me, a street or road in which there is a dead dog producing offensive putrefactive smell is a nuisance, just as earlier described on the effects of such dead smelly dogs to passing by people. And paragraph 63 describes the author of a nuisance as “a person by whose act, default, or sufferance the nuisance is caused, exists or is continued, whether he be the owner or occupier or both owner and occupier or any other person”.

And I am pretty sure that the roads and streets within the cities and councils are owned by the respective councils. As such, by implication of this legislation, councils have a responsibility of removing dead dogs which pollute our environment in the city and town roads and streets.