The Peshawar district administration has withdrawn cash reward on killing of one rat, two weeks after authorities announced to kick off mouse killing drive in the city.
The local administration had announced Rs.25 reward for killing of one rat, after receiving hundreds of complaints of rodents infesting the region’s biggest city.
However, sources say the city government is in no mood to pay the reward, saying that the announcement of reward “is being ridiculed.”
The Water and Sanitation Programme (WSSP) department will now be running the drive, reports said.
Rats described as being up to 12 inches (30 centimetres) long are making life miserable in Peshawar, residents said.
They are so huge that “even cats are scared of them,” Hammad Khan, a Peshawar resident, told a foreign media agency on Thursday, adding that the rodents were gnawing “everything: food, clothes, even damaging the structure of the house”.
Residents said the toothy creatures make their home in an open sewer which flows through the city and come out at night, scurrying about poor neighbourhoods.
Residents said it was likely recent monsoon rains had sent the rodents scurrying into the city. At least five babies have died in the last three years after being bitten by rats.
