According to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, workers engaged by it killed over 1 lakh rats in the first three months of this year.
Rats are out in Mumbai. And in droves.
The population of the little furry creatures has been growing at a fast pace, suggests the data on rodents killed by the civic body in past three years.
According to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, workers engaged by it killed over 1 lakh rats in the first three months of this year. The figure for last year stood at 2.4 lakh, up from 2.1 lakh in the year before.
The numbers were provided to Chetan Kothari in response to his application under the Right to Information Act. With monsoon months still to pass, the operation on rats is likely to yield a much higher number. The mammals are known to be carriers of several types of disease, including plague.
The rat menace is acute in the island city, which has limits between Colaba and Sion-Mahim, where houses stand cheek by jowl in a maze of narrow lanes, said a BMC official. Waste is the biggest attraction for rats, say health officials.
More than 70 percent of the rats were killed in the night. The island city has all of the 44 night rat killers, said the RTI reply. Each night rat killer is expected to hunt down a minimum 30 rats based on which the person is paid.
"The figure has increased because the number of people killing has increased. We are looking to outsourcing the work of night rat killers in suburbs too," said a BMC officer.
Suburbs did not have any rat killing in 2015 and 2016 as there was no staff. Since past 16 months, the BMC roped in NGOs to control the rodent population in the M/east ward (Govandi), S ward (Bhandup) and T ward (Mulund). Since then, over 30,000 rats have been killed in the eastern suburbs. Also, there aren't many rat killers for western suburbs.
"Either the BMC is preparing itself better so that there is no problem of diseases during the monsoon or there are more rats that are being spotted and killed because the city has become more dirty," said Kothari.
How to check entry of rats
- Store food items in containers with lids, do not dump garbage in the open. Avoid keeping unwanted material like scrap or debris inside the house
- Go for rodent proofing of grills, windows, kadappa, trim branches of trees that touch houses
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