Jakarta to pay $1.5 for every rat caught to contain rat menace

Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, is one of the world's most overcrowded and polluted megacities and it has launched a program to rid its streets of rats - the offer to citizens is earn $1.50 for every rat they catch. The authorities hope the such an incentive via the Rat Eradication Movement will go a long way to clean up the teeming city of about 10 million where enormous rats are a common sight on rubbish-strewn roads and in poor slum areas.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 19 October 2016.

The big rats are dangerous and could spread disease. Citizens have been advised not to use guns tyo kill the rats because a missed shot could hit some others. The captured rats will have to be handed over to local officials, who would make the payment and send the animals to Jakarta's sanitation agency for burial.
However, there is no guarantee the plan will work because a exercise in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi during French colonial rule backfired. There the rat catchers had to present the tails as evidence they had caught the animals. But many simply cut off the tail and released the rats which would return to the sewers and breed. Finally, the rat population did not reduce as had been planned.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org


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