You may have heard of the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and even the War on Weight. Well, weeks after a rat was filmed sleeping amongst milk cartons at Aeon 1Utama, Selangor has hit back hard with its own War On… rodents.
The video that started it all was just 12 seconds of a rat in a state of sleeping bliss, drawn in, perhaps, by Aeon’s reasonable prices, and comfortable temperatures. The clip was originally posted to the popular citizen journalism Facebook page We Are Malaysians and saw 40,000 hits before mainstream media picked up the story.
The public outcry led to the popular supermarket’s investigation and subsequent forced closure by health authorities. Now the Selangor Health, Welfare, Women and Family Affairs Committee has ordered that all 12 Health Departments in the local council step up their checks at food establishments to fight the growing rat population in commercial areas.
Just how bad is it, you ask? Well, last year, Komugi bakery in popular MidValley Shopping Center was forced to close after a rat was spotted having a leisurely lunch on top of several sandwiches. In 2016, the Health Ministry issued a warningagainst contracting leptospirosis, a deadly disease found in rat urine, in unsanitary eateries, after a Kedah teacher died from the disease. This year, three men in Johor contracted the illness.
For a country that likes to gauge the authenticity and taste of its hawker food by the griminess of where it’s served, the reality of the dangers is a bit hard to swallow.
The Selangor Health Department is proposing twice-yearly pest control certifications, and fortnightly local council visual inspections of hypermarkets. Chairman Dr Daroyah Alwi added that if a rat or evidence of pests are found, the premises must be shut for two weeks to avoid contamination and allow cleaning to take place.
In the meantime, keep live-blogging your vermin encounters and posting to social. At the very least, it seems to work in forcing food suppliers to clean up their acts.
