In The Media

The Star, 5 April 2002
Choir to hold concert to help two animal lovers

LOVABLE DOGS ... Kang (left) sharing an anecdote with Zakiah (centre) and Kam about the 80 stray dogs living with her in a rented room.
PENANG: A 40-member world-class children’s choir is coming to the rescue of two women who have cared for over 130 stray dogs and cats.

The Kuala Lumpur-based Operafest Children’s Choir, which has won accolades internationally, will perform at the Caring Society Complex on July 26 to help raise funds for Kang Gaik Kee, 60, and Zakiah Mohd Ali.

Its music director and organiser Kam Sun-Yoke said the children, aged from seven to 18, would be singing from a vast repertoire of choral numbers.

Kam, herself a dog lover who forks out about RM300 a month to support a number of strays in Penang, said animals were often justify out when it came to charity.

“People take care of people, but animals have no one to take care of them. The concert will also be good way to sow a love for animals in the children,” she said.

Kam said since the choir’s inception in 1986, it had raised about RM3mil for numerous charities in addition to sponsoring the group’s trips to international choir competitions.

The children have performed in Holland, Wales, Greece, Macedonia, Australia and the United States and even sang with the prestigious Vienna Boys’ Choir.

Kang’s plight was first highlighted in The Star in January after she was issued an eviction notice from the chief tenant to vacate her rented room in Air Itam, where she had been keeping 80 strays, by March.

Kang, who had asked a postponement to look for another place, said she might move to Taiping by the end of the month to the piece of vacant land offered for her dogs by a well-wisher.Zakiah, who is providing shelter, food and medical care to about 50 stray cats at her home in Taman Inderawasih, Prai, has set up a society for animal lovers called Best Friend’s Pet Sanctuary Station.

She and several animal lovers are looking for a vacant piece of land to rent to set up a shelter for stray animals.