The University of the South Pacific Lautoka Campus has partnered with the Pacific Animal Shelter and Hospital (PASH) to create more awareness on animal welfare in the country.
The campus hosted a high tea fundraising event sponsored by Viti Rottweilers for PASH on August 24.
Campus Director Dr Pramila Devi stressed that apart from providing tertiary education USP Lautoka engages in various Continuing and Community Education programs with short and long term courses and towards uplifting the standard of living in local communities.
She revealed that they do whatever is in their capacity as a university to assist community projects such as the PASH fundraiser.
PASH Founder and Trustee Marie Peyman informed that they started the organization in Legalega Nadi in April 2019 to improve animal welfare situation in Fiji.
“What we did was we looked into what the needs were in Fiji and obviously there were many. So we focused in on a few things, primarily the animal welfare, overpopulation issues and on the lack of medical care,” Peyman revealed.
She informed that they will try to minimise the over population of dogs and cats problem in Fiji through proper community education.
“We have a community room in our facility which unfortunately we will start off with our educational program from first quarter of 2021 due to the Covid 19 pandemic.
“Here we will be doing in-house educational programs for children, especially going into the school systems, and basically providing education in animal welfare.
“We are also focusing on another issue that was dear to all of our hearts as animal owners, and that was the lack of advanced medical care in the country. So due to the fact that we did have a very substantial donation. We have been blessed with being in providing treatment facility that has very state of the art equipment we have a full body digital X ray, we have full dentistry we have all kinds of fun and exciting equipment that’s never been in Fiji before”.
“So we are able to provide very close to World Class animal care. We also have been able to provide Fiji’s first boarding facility for cats and dogs. The dogs have indoor outdoor facilities. So they are securely locked in at night. They have big play areas during the day. The cats have a really, really nice indoor facility, everything is air conditioned. So it makes a very nice life if you have any travels. And you just want to make sure that your pet is happy. And in a place, it’s almost as good as home.”
She added that they have also adopted around 420 animals at their shelter who are provided the best medical care.
