Cape Town declares war on rats
2009-04-24 09:57
Cape Town - The city has declared war on its rat population.
Poison, human force and extra funding will be combined for the blitz on rats between May and September.
Some of the rats in the city apparently weigh up to 60g.
The Grand Parade, station deck, Gardens and Adderley Street will be the first trenches.
The existing 1 917 poison bases in the greater Cape Town and surrounding informal suburbs will be expanded between May and September with an additional 1 140 poison stations in the city centre, said Ian Gildenhuys, the head of environmental health in the western sub-district at the Cape Town municipality's health department.
Four specialist rat catchers will be trained in the next week at a rat poison plant in Brackenfell, and will support the work that is already being done in the city under the leadership of Peter Holmes of the environmental health department.
Squirrels may die
According to Holmes, the rat problem was enormous and city health authorities are determined to address it, even if it results in the unintentional deaths of some urban squirrels. He said squirrel deaths could not be avoided as the animals behaved similarly when it came to feeding.
The city spends R373 717 on rat poison annually, said Gildenhuys, but Holmes said on Thursday much more of the extremely expensive poison was necessary to control the rat problem.
In areas where the problem was particularly bad, like on the station deck, at least nine 20kg boxes of Storm rat poison would be used at a time, said Holmes, who on Thursday attended the training session with the newcomers. These boxes cost R1 650 each.
The poison caused the rats to die within five days due to internal bleeding, depending on how big the rat was and how much was ingested, said Mark Enslin, technical adviser of environmental health products at Coopers, a company that sells rat poison.
The decision to use poisoning rather than traps or "glue boards", should be seen as a nod to animal rights groups, said Enslin. Glue boards "catch" the rats, but sometimes, due to stress, the rats chewed off their own feet in an attempt to free themselves.
Nuisance
Faldielah Williams, a flower seller in Adderley Street, said on Thursday that the rats were a huge nuisance. They urinated on plants that had to be arranged, ate the dahlias and even scared off prospective buyers.
"They come like popcorn in a pot from there," said Williams and pointed to a drain. According to her, two flower arrangers had to be taken to hospital due to rat urine.
Gildenhuys confirmed that rats carried many diseases, including rinderpest.
Coen Birkenstock, manager of corporate affairs in the Cape Town harbour, spoke on behalf of the Transnet National Ports authority and said ships had "rat screens" on anchor ropes to stop other rats from climbing down on local shores.