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RTV East
NOS News•
Volunteers at the Twente animal ambulance drive their rides alone for the time being. For safety reasons, two volunteers should actually be on the car, but there is a great shortage of people who want to do the work.
“The shortage of volunteers is happening everywhere in the Netherlands,” says Niels Kalkman of Dierenbescherming Nederland. “It sometimes also happens in other places that a ride on the animal ambulance is driven by one volunteer. But Twente is the first region where they will now do this structurally.”
In the Hof van Twente working area, five volunteers are now active at the animal ambulance. That is a significant decrease. “Before corona, we were about twenty to thirty volunteers,” says Alphons Lansink, who still works as a volunteer himself. RTV East.
An animal that attacks
Spring is a busy period for the animal ambulance, because nature is ‘more active’ then. Young birds fall out of nests and cats in heat or dogs in heat just walk onto the street. It is not always pleasant to go to such a report as the only volunteer at the animal ambulance.
“I don’t always feel safe. It happens that people are not in a good mood or that an animal attacks you. Then you are on your own,” says Lansink. “And it is difficult to lift a large animal into the ambulance on your own,” says Lucas Wevers, a volunteer at the animal ambulance for 22 years.
The shortage of volunteers has been going on for some time, but is slowly becoming acute, says Kalkman of Dierenbescherming Nederland. “It’s not always fun work at the animal ambulance either; last winter it was mainly collecting a lot of birds due to the bird flu.”
In April, Dierenbescherming Nederland holds its annual open days. Then a campaign to recruit new volunteers for the ambulance also starts. “If we don’t find volunteers, the ambulance will stop,” warns volunteer Wevers. “People can no longer reach us seven days a week, 24 hours a day.”
