The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has raised concerns with the lack of awareness on how to treat animals.

Since January the animal welfare group has received more than 60 reports of animal cruelty and attends to more than five unreported cases every day.

Shelter manager, Shaneel Narayan says the shelter has taken the initiative to organize community programs and awareness through social media, but it is not enough.

“Because we have also been doing a lot of education and awareness on our social media our clients coming into to SPCA and we have been speaking with people before people didn’t know where to go and where to report these cases now they know where  so that’s one of the reasons we’ve received more report”

Narayan says lack of staff and resources is a concern for the SPCA.

“The limitation for SPCA is limited resources and staff we don’t have enough staff to attend to these cases we only have two appointed staff who look at all these cases and we basically cover a large area like the whole of Suva area”

Cases of animal cruelty in 2020 have been higher than any other year in recent history.