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Residents ratty as vermin woes up
Friday 5th December 2008, 11:37AM GMT.
Hundreds more complaints have been made about rats in part of the Black Country during the last year, it has emerged.
Council chiefs have blamed milder winters and people dropping litter for the rise in complaints.
In Sandwell the council has received just over 4,000 calls each year from residents and businesses for the last few years but that figure increased by around 300 during the last year. Councillor Mahboob Hussain said: “In 2007-08 the number of calls we received rose slightly.
“It is due to the fact that the climate is warming which helps rats to breed, and the fact that despite repeated warnings people still throw away food on the streets which encourages the rat population to grow.”
There were a total of 2,354 complaints about rats in the Walsall borough in the year up to March 31.
David Elrington, Walsall Council’s senior principal environmental health officer, said: “Complaints about vermin have been steadily increasing on a national basis, and the Walsall borough is no exception to this.
“We have certainly had to deal with about 160 more complaints about rats compared to this time last year.
“We would agree with our colleagues at Sandwell that how people and businesses dispose of their waste is a contributing factor to the increase in the rat population, as well as the milder winters we are currently experiencing.
“Walsall Council offers a free pest control service to households which have a problem with vermin.”
However some areas are bucking the trend. Reports about rats have dropped in Dudley according to the council.
Dudley Council spokeswoman, Vikki Marshall, said from January 1 to December 31 2007 there were 2,950 reports of rats in the borough, while from January 1 to December 2 2008 there were 2,667 reports.
Meanwhile in Staffordshire, Cannock Chase Council has dealt with 556 cases of rats so far this year. This is compared to 732 dealt with in 2007.
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The biggest rats are the councilors!!!!
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The simple answer is for people to ensure they dispose of their rubbish, take-away cartons etc. in a responsible manner i.e. a bin and not the pavement! Then again, that maybe too simple for some!
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thats what you get with fortnightly bin collections,and sandwell council are full of greedy rats fleecing the hard pressed taxpayer,yet i hear the council tax will rise again next year i can smell a rat and it’s not wearing a gray fur jacket.
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Councillor Mahboob Hussain said: “In 2007-08 the number of calls we received rose slightly.
“It is due to the fact that the climate is warming which helps rats to breed, and the fact that despite repeated warnings people still throw away food on the streets which encourages the rat population to grow.”
Then we have from the next borough!!!!!!!
However some areas are bucking the trend. Reports about rats have dropped in Dudley according to the council.
Dudley Council spokeswoman, Vikki Marshall, said from January 1 to December 31 2007 there were 2,950 reports of rats in the borough, while from January 1 to December 2 2008 there were 2,667 reports.
Councillor Mahboob Hussain said “It is due to the fact that the climate is warming which helps rats to breed” so according to that, Dudley’s climate change is different to Sandwell’s climate change???????? Even though the boundaries are adjacent to each other, strange how that works.
I know its probably a daft idea but could it be that Dudley’s Refuse Collection services actually takes the rubbish away instead of dropping it behind the rubbish collection wagon, and could it be that Dudley Council actually clean their roads instead of trying to make them look like a replica of a 3rd world country.
Sandwell has stopped cleaning out its road drains, a perfect breeding ground for rats, roads don’t get cleaned anymore, Councillor Mahboob Hussain, that’s why the rats are breeding faster, change the rats habitat so that it replicates an area of India and rats bred faster.
Stop paying Council leaders £140.000 a year, cut councillors expenses, stop providing councillors with a free pension and use that money on providing services, that’s what we pay our council tax for…
Jim of Bearwood
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