Last year, the FEHD collected 33,336 dead rats and captured 33,846 live rats. Photo: FEHD
The rodent infestation in Hong Kong is serious. Last year, the government allocated more than $700 million of public funds to the pest control work of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, which was the highest in the past five years. However, the results were not significant. Only 67,182 rats and mice were caught, the average cost of each one more than $10,000.
According to the latest government documents, the resources allocated in the past five years have continued to increase. Among them, the overall expenditure on pest control services, including government staff expenses, annual service contract expenses and other daily expenses, has increased from $569 million in 2017 to $731 million last year. The estimated expenditure for this year will increase further to $751 million. The number of civil servants for pest control work will increase to 745 during the year, and the total number of outsourced staff will increase to 2,208.
FEHD revealed that they are cooperating with two local universities to conduct research on mice in Hong Kong, to further understand the food preferences of mice, and to introduce more attractive baits suitable for use in rodent infestation investigations. Photo: FEHD
As for the number of rats caught, the FEHD collected 33,336 dead rats and 33,846 live rats last year -a total of 67,182 rats – an increase of 6,322 rats compared with the previous year. The expenditure on rodent control has also increased accordingly, from $663million in 2020 to $726 million in 2022-21, and based on the number of rats caught last year, the cost of catching each rat is more than $10,000. The FEHD said that the overall rodent infestation reference index was 3.1% last year, a slight decrease of 0.5% from 3.6% in 2020. However, there are still three monitoring sites with the rodent reference index reaching Level 2, that is, areas where rodent infestation is slightly more common , and the hardest-hit areas are Yau Tsim District, Wan Chai District and Sham Shui Po District while the rodent infestation index of Wong Tai Sin District, Tuen Mun District and Sai Kung District all increased compared with the previous year.
The Government will allocate an additional $500 million to the FEHD for the next two years to strengthen environmental hygiene services, including intensifying efforts to prevent and control rodent infestations in response to the epidemic. FEHD revealed that in order to improve the accuracy of the rodent infestation reference index, they are cooperating with two local universities to conduct research on rats in Hong Kong, to further understand the food preferences of rats, and to introduce more attractive rat baits suitable for rodent infestation investigations. The department will also organise a territory-wide and cross-departmental rodent eradication campaign every year. The second phase of the campaign will start in early July this year .
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