CitCo: Belize City infested by rats

On Wednesday, we broadcast the deplorable state of one Belize City bakery after the business was shut down by health officials because inspectors found evidence of rat and roach infestation as well as raw sewage on the property. But as News Five’s Janelle Chanona reports tonight, unsanitary conditions are plaguing most of the old capital.

Janelle Chanona, Reporting
Beneath the colourful fruit and vegetable stalls of the Queen Square Market lies a dirty secret … a labyrinth of rat tunnels.

Anna Rodriguez, Market Vendor
?Translated: Plenty rat. And we can?t control them because you kill one another one comes and they are very big! The cats don?t want them, the cats are afraid of them! They don?t eat them.?

Myria Lopez, Market Vendor
?The rats are in caves, under the ground. You can see the number of holes over there. That?s where they live, so how are they going to die??

Jose Velasquez, Market Vendor
?Translated: Yes! Lots of rats and cockroaches. They are in everything. I have to try to keep around here clean because the people come here to buy.?

Manuel Castillo, Butcher, C.C. Meats
?We have a lot of roaches and rats and we try to keep it down by buying insecticides and poisons for the rats.?

Janelle Chanona
?Is that something you have to do daily, weekly??

Manuel Castillo
?On a weekly basis.?

For Jean Olivera, poor garbage disposal and collection as well as numerous abandoned lots scattered across the city has created one big rat nest in Belize City.

Jean Olivera, Customer
?They breed so fast. There were plenty with me because when I open my safe drawer one day. There were six young ones in it. There?s two yards that are abandoned next door to me and boy the rats are in there. We need to have garbage disposal for people to put their trash and then we won?t have as much rats because there won?t be anything to encourage the rats.?

Wayne Usher, Deputy Mayor, Belize City Council
?Terrible. It?s really bad.?

Deputy Mayor Wayne Usher agrees Belize City is in the grips of a rat infestation.

Amid raising concerns about the spread of the deadly disease leptospirosis, this afternoon Usher met with public health department officials and eradication experts to strategize response to the problem. And trash is at the top of the list.

Wayne Usher
?It?s a serious problem and again, it has to do with how we store, how we bag and how we dispose of our garbage. So the public information campaign is crucial to the success of our programme. The community must be involved as well or we will not succeed in all of this.?

But with an education and clean up campaign, Usher says the council will also be prosecuting those who litter.

Wayne Usher
?Isn?t it ironic that with all the signs that?s where the most garbage seems to be dumped. It?s almost like it?s wilful, mischievous that they put these things there, right under the sign to make a statement like, you can?t do me nothing sort of thing. Well I have some bad news for these guys out there who?s doing that. The laws for littering is five hundred dollars for a person caught littering, once we can prove the offence and we are going to be proving these offences and two thousand dollars for any company, entity or organization or wilfully throws the garbage there or encourages it to be so we are going to be these laws teeth they are in the books. We are going to be the enforcement and we must get this thing under control.?

Reporting for News Five, I am Janelle Chanona.

According to Usher, rat eradicators Ryan Swift and Arturo Coye of New York are lending technical expertise to the Belize City Council in its efforts to get rid of the pests.