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Kota Kinabalu: City Hall is looking into a new strategy to reduce the rat population in the city.
"We are re-examining and re-thinking our previous and current strategies," said Mayor Abidin Madingkir who officiated at City Hall's first in-house training on rat control for its staff here, Wednesday.
According to him, the programme is a continuation of a rat control programme, which was launched by City Hall in June last year, as well as a list of other programmes.
Madingkir who said the programme is aimed at their office based staff also pointed on the fact that rats roam the whole universe.
"They can be found everywhere even as far as Europe and in big cities such as London.
Exterminating them from the face of the earth is not possible, but we can work towards reducing their population."
He added that due to their unhygienic nature, rats are known to cause a lot of health problems as well as household problems, among them being electrical wire damage.
"It seems like people are so used to seeing them here and are so used to them that they are not even bothered by their presence," he added.
The training is therefore vital in order to spread awareness and educate City Hall staff.
Madingkir said it is like nurturing a seed and watering it everyday until it grows into a plant.
"Methods used to control them do not depend only on the extermination of their habitat alone, but also in providing a clean environment in general. Apart from that, improper food storage and keeping leftover food encourages them to breed."
"Problems related to these rodents which are notorious in offices have led us to conduct this special training.
"The programme is conducted to give proper awareness on rat control in the workplace environment.
"Before this, the target was entrepreneurs especially those involved with food around the city."
He also highlighted the fact that the responsibility of rat control must not be carried by City Hall's vector control unit alone but should be taken seriously by all City Hall staff.
Some 40 participants were present including invited guest Amir Paduan D. Daniel from Labuan Corporation's Town Service Department.
City Hall's Head of Public Health Danny Kok said the rat menace in offices is caused by food thrown inside uncollected rubbish bins.
Green Sabah says: Rats are still well-known carriers of over 70 diseases. From the transmission of bubonic plague to typhus and Hantavirus, rat infestations can prove harmful to human health. One of the most dangerous rat-borne diseases is the bubonic plague and its variants. Transfer occurs when infested rats or rat fleas bite human beings. Symptoms include headache, weakness and coughing. Septicemic plague may result in bleeding into the skin and other organs. This fatal disease often kills within the same day that symptoms first appear.
7 comments:
Hopefully the strategic can help to reduce rat population in KK
Hope that the DBKK will come up with the right Strategy for rat control.
Jika Strategi ini berjaya, ini akan membantu meningkatkan kebersihan bandar kita.
Biasanya tikus liar boleh membawa penyakit, kita memerlukan satu strategi untuk mengawal bilangan mereka.
This is true, Anak Sabah. Rats are indeed carriers for disease such as Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS), Murine Typhus, Rat-bite fever (RBF), Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, Leptospirosis, Eosinophilic Meningitis and others. To read further into the various diseases that rats could carry, you can go here:
http://www.orlandorats.com/diseases.htm
However I do hope that the DBKK will put down the rats as humanely as possible.
controlling or reduce them can be a challenge. they reproduce monthly. A single rat can produce 120 or more offspring per year. Rats are smart, and traps alone may not be enough.. so hopefully this new strategy will be able to solve this problem..
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