Recently there have been quite a few stories about all of the rats in Jakarta’s City Hall. Not the corrupt kind. Actual rats. Like, the scary kind that bite people’s legs
Apparently City Hall is full of piles of old papers that provide a perfect nesting ground for rodents. Despite some recent clean-up efforts, the rats are still apparently a big problem that some think require serious extermination efforts.
Yesterday, Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama said he was shocked to find out that a budget of Rp 200 million had been proposed to battle the rat problem in City Hall. So he suggested that the government take another approach.
“Or we could just buy a bunch of cats,” he said, as quoted by Tribunnews.
Today, Vice Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat told reporters Ahok was just kidding about the cat procurement. And they wouldn’t be effective against City Hall’s rodents anyways.
“He was just joking about that. Besides, now the rats are the same size as the cats, anyways,” Djarot said.
We’re not sure if he was joking too.
Agustino Darmawan, the head of Jakarta’s General Affairs Bureau, was definitely not joking around when he requested the Rp 200 million per year budget to battle City Hall’s rats. He said the problem was so massive that they needed to perform extermination efforts continuously instead of on a seasonal basis. He even said they might need more money to really put a dent in the pest population.
