El Refugio del Burrito condemns the Municipality of Santorini because of mistreatment of taxi donkeys

In the blistering heat of a Greek Summer thousands of tourists unload from a massive Cruise ship and are ferried ashore to the small port of Fira in Santorini. The options of getting to the small town high above are either by cable car or Donkey Taxi, because the cable car is quickly flooded by the tourists a queue quickly builds for the donkeys. Over 200 of them have been tied the hot sun for hours waiting for the first of the tourists to arrive. There is a shelter and water available a little way up the steps the owners choose not rest the animals there as it is not so convenient, instead they take up most of the last fifty meters of steps to the loading area. Any tourist wanting to walk up the steps must first try and pass the large mules and donkeys who do not have enough room to stand properly and are wearing heavy equipment.

Using sticks and shouts the owners berate the animals if they do not react quickly enough to them which all ads to the chaos.

The tourist mount the donkeys and start the exhausting journey to the top of the hundreds of steps. Any person is taken large or small and unfortunately because it is easier to load a large person on a small donkey the small donkey often has the biggest load.

Once unloaded the donkeys either carry down tourists wanting to return to the port or are hurried down again.

Sometimes many ships can arrive in one day with thousands of tourists needing carrying up the steps, a donkeys work day can last from 9am to 7pm and those owners who are more assertive will force there donkeys to the front of the queue causing their donkeys to work almost continually all day.

After working for many years with the Municipality of Santorini and the donkey owners themselves The Donkey Sanctuary is sad to announce that because of the actions of both the Municipality and the donkey taxi owners we can no longer support the project as we have for so long. After helping the Municipality to set up a code of practice which governed the use of the donkeys and providing the owners with free veterinary help and advice for their animals we discovered that the whole operation was a sham and that the procedures were only adhered to during our visits! This tied in with reports from tourists who had visited the Island who were reporting a completely different situation to the one we were being shown when we visited.

As a charity we work on a trust basis with governmental bodies such as Municipalities and have in the past worked closely with many all over Europe, this is the 1st time that trust has been abused in this way and we are also very upset that equipment we purchased to improve the quality of lives of the taxi donkeys and which we were going to give to those taxi owners as a reward for improving the welfare standards for their animals has gone missing. As far as we know the equipment which was impounded by the port authorities was released to the Municipality using money from a local animal welfare organisation, not from the Municipalities funds.

As if this was not enough the Municipality has tried to get us involved with a "refuge" they have set up for abandoned donkeys on the Island. After informing them that they should not start a refuge until they had the correct facilities and infrastructure to look after the animals properly they went ahead anyway and moved animals there from where we do not know, we have sent investigators to the Island and the reports about the conditions of these donkeys is not good. The Municipality think that they will be able to raise their profile from the plight of these poor creatures and play on our feeling and welfare concerns to get us involved and investing but in this instance we cannot do so as it will not help resolve the problems in Santorini in the long term.

This Summer, unless the Municipality and the Donkey Owners make major improvements to the working conditions for the donkeys and their terrible refuge we will be mounting a major campaign to publicise the problems facing the donkeys including be writing to the Cruise ship companies asking them to give all tourist leaflets provided by us about the taxi donkeys and why they should not use them, we will also be writing to the major media companies asking them to highlight the problems in Santorini. We also want to start an email campaign to the Mayor of the Island Aggelos Roussos demanding that he takes the welfare of these animals seriously and takes the following actions

• Go ahead with the plans to build a second cable car to save the donkeys from this terrible task
• Improves and enforces the code of practice for donkey taxis
• Ensures that the donkeys are properly licensed and receive veterinary inspections ensuring they are fit to work
• Ensure that the shelters and welfare facilities that are already in place are used by the owners
• Build further facilities at the top of the steps with the money promised by Stellios of Easy Jet over a year ago
• Work with The Donkey Sanctuary and the local welfare group to improve conditions of the taxi donkeys
• Provide proper facilities and care for the donkeys in the “refuge”

We need help from all our supporters to get the municipality of Santorini to change their ways, it is the money from tourism that has made the Island successful and if the tourist stop going because of the animal welfare issues it could also stop that success.

Please support our campaign to STOP THE ABUSE IN SANTORINI.