Transcript of remarks by SEE at media session
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Reporter: Mr Tse, you mentioned quite a few new equipment in this action, so, are the old methods or the old equipment not effective? Are this new equipment used in the whole territory of Hong Kong or just in particular places? And do you plan to introduce more new equipment or new ways to further raise the effectiveness?
Secretary for Environment and Ecology: Because the problem of rodent in this city has been a major concern, I, together with the FEHD (Food and Environmental Hygiene Department), have been working hard to explore more effective means to control rodent in the city. In this place, Tai Shing Street Market, if we keep on using old methods like rodent traps and cages in the conventional manner, on average we caught only 4.5 rodents per month in the past. After that, we tried new methods. First we placed rodent traps and rodent cages during the midnight, and we found that it has doubled the number we caught. Then we tried alcohol traps in this market and the number caught was further doubled. Since the end of November, we tried to use glue traps in this market, and in the first three weeks we caught over 380 rodents just in this market. Compared with the old methods, the new equipment and new approach certainly is more effective. Therefore, we are prepared to adopt similar methods in other places to catch rodents. But I would like to reiterate catching rodents is important. However, it is more important to maintain our places clean, so that we can stop the supply of food to rodents, and we need to install rodent barriers in order to stop the possibility of rodents moving around places. If we do that persistently, we will be able to put the rodent problem under control. Under this exercise (Cross-sectoral Territory-wide Anti-rodent Action), we pull together different sectors of the community and different departments of the Government. We work together to implement all those measures to put the rodent problem under control.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Wednesday, December 28, 2022
Issued at HKT 15:56
Issued at HKT 15:56
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