I felt a tremendous sense of sadness and helplessness and I would like to relate my recent experience at Zoo Negara.

My first encounter is when I saw the elephants which were kept in a heavily cemented enclosed area with very little vegetation and barely any water for them to splash on themselves in our hot weather.

Big birds like the hornbills are put in a very small enclosures while the giraffes were seen pacing up and down a narrow strip land. The hippos were given only a small pool that could barely fit them. Monkeys are housed small cages with hardly enough space for them to swing about.

The aquariums were dirty and moldy. Birds were placed in dingy and pitifully small areas. The orang utans were kept in a small enclosure and they looked pretty sad in that condition. The tigers and the rest of the cat species wereseen in a pitiful state.

These animals are given a very minimal home range. How would you like to be confined and be put in a different habitat? Please try to understand that they have feelings just like we humans do.

The animals at the mini zoo in Jabatan Perhilitan, Termeloh, Kuantan, however, are going through a much more worse situation than their friends in Zoo Negara.

Animals there are not given food or even water when the workers are on their off days. This is an act of pure cruelty towards animals and it is absolutely insane.

It cuts you real deep to see these animals suffering and there is not a religion in this world which sanctions the torture of animals.

I don't see why the WWF, SPCA, the Malaysian Nature Society and Sahabat Alam Malaysia are not putting in any efforts to check on the condition of the animals in all the zoos.

How long will it be until these animals come out from their misery? Till they are old and die? Or till they commit suicide?

Zoos and so called animal sanctuaries are nothing more than places of suffering for these animals and they exist only to earn money from the sponsors - not forgetting gate collections from the public.

These animals need to be saved from further harm.