Many sectors of the country, including Costa Rican authorities from Judicial Investigation Agency and the Public Ministry, are concerned about the first-reading approval of the Animal Welfare Act.
The lack of budgetary capacity of the OIJ and the State would not allow them to work efficiently to implement the law, in the case of its enactment.
For this and other important factors, OIJ’s director, Walter Espinoza, believes it’s appropriate that the Legislature changes the law to an more administrative setting.
It’s convenient to rethink this law and set it in the context of reality. I think it would be important to reorient the administrative area and not adding more crimes to the list,”
said Espinoza.
If everything continues, the entity believes preparation time is essential, in order to design the action plan to tackle crimes against animals.
All OIJ wants is that this law, in the event of its enactment, works. It cannot be just a symbol, it’s not to scare people, it’s to be applied,”
explained the official.
This is the same concern felt by the Public Defense and Alfredo Chirino, Dean of the Law School of the University of Costa Rica.
One of the difficulties will be to have a department specifically oriented to investigate acts of animal abuse, and it doesn’t exist right now, they would have to create it so that the law can be effective,”
said Chirino, who believes the enactment of the law will be followed by a great number of complaints for which the OIJ and the Public Ministry must be prepared.
It’s going to require technical training and adequate administrative organization to address the cases they’ll receive,
concluded the lawyer.