A Bill titled the “Elimination of Rabies and Registration of Dogs” was presented to Parliament on Thursday by the Minister of Public Administration, Provincial Councils and Local Government, the Daily Mirror reported. That portfolio is held by Professor Chandana Abheyaratne.
The legislation is the parliamentary stage of a measure gazetted on 13 September, which would require anyone keeping a dog over six weeks old to have it vaccinated against rabies and registered annually with the relevant local authority, with a Rs. 2,000 fine for failure to register on top of the registration fee.
What the Bill does
The proposed law sets out to eliminate rabies in Sri Lanka through three mechanisms: the vaccination of dogs, measures to control the dog population, and the regulation of commercial dog breeding. It also provides for the registration of dogs across the country.
It would establish a National Rabies Elimination Advisory Committee and Regional Rabies Elimination Advisory Committees to support and oversee eradication work.
If enacted, the Bill repeals the Rabies Ordinance (Chapter 476) and the Dog Registration Ordinance (Chapter 477), replacing that framework entirely with new provisions for rabies control and dog registration.
The debate around it
The measure has drawn opposing professional assessments since it was gazetted. Public Health Inspectors have warned that the registration requirement could deter owners from presenting animals and so derail the existing vaccination drive, raising rather than lowering human rabies risk. Veterinarians have argued the opposite — that the law ends the arbitrary killing of animals on suspicion of rabies.
Rabies had claimed 20 lives in Sri Lanka by mid-July this year, four of them in the Puttalam District, with Abheyaratne saying at the time that the deaths were preventable. The Daily Mirror’s report does not state when the second reading debate will be taken up.
