New Kingston has been breathing a sigh of relief for the past couple of years, coming from once being a gnarly romping ground for rats which are known to spread more than 35 diseases.

Pest control specialists say that history, which brought on national disgrace, forced business operators in and around the area to develop ongoing relations with them and comply to public health guidelines to keep the rodents at bay.

In April 2012, survey findings revealed at a meeting of the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) that rodents were overrunning some sections of the Corporate Area, with 82 per cent of 120 communities surveyed found to have rats.

Further, 37 of the communities reportedly had moderate infestation, nine were light, and two were heavy.

Lincoln Russell, operations managing director at Target Pest Management Company, told the Jamaica Observer that his company currently has contracts with some establishments in the commercial district of New Kingston, where rodent control is a part of the service that is provided.

“From my experience, I would say the situation now is tolerable. Speaking about the clients, the control is tolerable; it’s not that excessive where you have rodents entering into buildings, or sightings of rodents over the place. It hasn’t reached that point. I would say it is pretty much controlled,” he said.

Before, he added, the company was requested by the Ministry of Health because the situation in New Kingston “was really extreme. You could see them in the drains, you could see them in and out of the garbage skips. It was crazy. It was really bad and I think the operators were quite slack in their garbage management and that was the main source of it. The rats were all around. It was a creepy sight.”

Russell credited more compliance on the part of business operators, for the infestation-free New Kingston today, which underwent a six-week rat-eradication programme by the public health department in June 2001, that cost nearly $1 million.

“During that period, the owners of businesses were asked to do better garbage management, garbage disposal and so on. One of the problems was the restaurants’ and other food establishments’ garbage skips being accessible to rats outside and so on. Also, I think the public health inspectors may have become more vigilant and requiring these persons to comply with the necessary pest control services,” he said.

“As a matter of fact, there have been occasions where operators of wholesales, stores, restaurants and so on have called us because they have been threatened with closure from the public health department. So, that’s the reality now… they are realising that they have to comply and have a standard of operation.”

Last year, Karen Brown, president of the Jamaica Association of Public Health Inspectors (JAPHI), assured that all reports made about non-compliant food establishments are taken seriously.

Brown warned that non-compliant food establishments on the island that continue to operate unlawfully can be shut down and even prosecuted.

She was addressing a Jamaica Information Service (JIS) think tank, held at the agency’s Montego Bay, St James, regional office late 2021.

Brown noted that when a report is made on a food handling establishment, it is considered “almost like an emergency”, investigated within 24 hours, and upon inspection, if the findings indicate that there are significant challenges that may compromise public health, immediate closure can take place which is then endorsed by the parish medical officer of health.

Russell told the Sunday Observer that more business owners are requesting routine pest control services over 10 years ago.

“Not just New Kingston, but generally all around. I think more persons are recognising or being forced to have a programme in place, with sanitation being up to scratch. And as a result, they are requesting pest control services.”

Louis Tulloch, managing director of Carib Pest Control Services, said there has been a notable “tightening up of hygiene”.

“The standards have been raised because people are now more exposed to the requirements of First-World standards and they can’t play around because the minute somebody gets sick or complains, you have a thing now called cellphones. It can’t be hush, hush again. The minute somebody sees something, it’s online. So, the world has become all eyes,” he told the Sunday Observer.

“Wyndham Hotel was very instrumental in bringing the powers that be together, because they [rats] used to drive guest off the lawn. The road section behind Wyndham, the rats were literally running on it. There has been a significant decline in the request for rodent services. The education on proper sanitation and the consequences and adverse effects of improper sanitation has forced owners to be really complaint. Back in the day, it was like ‘who cares?’ Whatever was put in place has paid off,” he continued.

Dwight Ebanks, proprietor of Supreme Exterminators, painted a grim picture of the situation that plagued New Kingston in previous years.

Ebanks said he remembers going to one location to do rodent baiting in rat burrows, and seeing results as early as three days later.

“When I went back there, it was a scene I had never seen before. Hundreds of dead rats; maybe about 200 dead rats. I’ve never seen anything like that and I don’t know if I’m going to live to see that kind of scene ever again in my lifetime,” he told the Sunday Observer.

Ebanks shared another experience where rats had overrun a building in New Kingston.

“I was working on the inside of the building. I heard movements around the back and when I opened the back door, it looked like the ground outside was moving, only to realise that it was all rats. Maybe thousands of rats. It was horrible back then. We don’t have those kinds of situations anymore. We had clients of all different calibre… office buildings, restaurants, manufacturing businesses, bars, clubs, house holders in the area, apartment complexes.”

As of right now, Ebanks said, New Kingston is safe from the rats.

“We don’t have anywhere that’s bursting at the seams right now. I don’t see where I could put a figure where I could say an area is out of control. It would appear as if people have been forced to come on board to have pest management done, and it could be good work from health departments and their inspection teams. People are trying their best to dispose of their refuse and their general garbage better,” he said.

“So, you would find that rats will have to work harder to find food. So, you wouldn’t have that kind of situation that existed in the New Kingston area again, although we are having push backs with the collection of garbage.”

In September 2012, then Opposition spokesman for housing, water and the environment Dr Horace Chang said many of the urban areas in Jamaica were being overrun by rats because of waste, overgrowth, inadequate drain cleaning and the poor management of derelict buildings and other places that act as habitat for vermin.

Chang’s call came amid news of troubling rodent infestations on the Pedro Cays, an important source of the country supply of fish, and reports that most urban centres across the island face serious infestation.

He said the growing rat infestation is a sign of the Government’s neglect in rehabilitating and maintaining the country’s infrastructure.

That same year, then Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller had established the interministerial committee to develop a comprehensive approach and implementation plan to spearhead clean-up activities across the island. The Ministry of Health allocated $13.4 million to pay 61 community health workers as part of a strategy to clean up the island.

The Ministry of Local Government had also also allocated some $18 million to the different parish councils for the clean-up of communities.

But in recent time, there have still been complaints.

In January 2019, the St James Health Department was granted $1 million from the St James Municipal Corporation to embark on a campaign to rid Gloucester Avenue in Montego Bay of rats. Two years before, the St James Health Department carried out a rodent-control programme at a cost of $6.5 million, along the same avenue.

In August 2020 business operators and commuters in Half-Way Tree, St Andrew, called on public health authorities to intervene, after prolonged sightings of rats under a garbage pile in the vicinity. Vendors lamented that at nights the rats leave the pile and enter their stalls.