Democratic Alliance Gauteng Member of the Provincial Legislature, Mervyn Cirota, has urged the City of Johannesburg to rethink its strategy of using owls to fight rodents in Alexandra.
This after the news of owls being killed by residents as they are considered to be evil birds used in witchcraft.
Cirota said the council should have conducted extensive consultations with the residents of Alexandra before the re-implementation of the programme.
“Council just rushed to re-implement the owl programme without first evaluating effectiveness of the programme launched earlier in 2012. No one knows whether the owls were successful in their job and where they eventually disappeared to,” he said.
Cirota said the council was simply out of touch with how residents feel about the owls project.
“It is clear the City of Johannesburg’s owl plan is not helping to rid Alexandra of the rat infestation,” he added.
There was no empirical evidence to suggest that owls had been successful in curbing the area’s rat population, yet the city forged ahead with this project at a whopping cost of R2.5 million, Cirota said.
Instead of using owls, he suggested the council consider implementing an experimental programme from the USA which uses high frequency radio waves to inhibit the breeding patterns of rats, which he said was proving to be a success.
Using owls to combat the problem will simply not do enough to significantly reduce high breeding rates, he claimed.
“The city needs to conduct a proper investigation into the extent of this problem and look into alternative methods of control if we are to effectively tackle this infestation,” Cirota concluded.
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Alex residents kill owls because they are used for ‘witchcraft’
