Rodents, a problem at the St Lucy correctional home for girls

Authorities at the island’s juvenile correctional centre are battling a rat infestation that last week resulted in the closure of one of the control rooms at the female section in St Lucy.

But Principal of the Government Industrial School (GIS) Erwin Leacock said while access to the room was prohibited as a precautionary measure, both he and an environmental health inspector who visited from the Maurice Byer Polyclinic in St Peter, acknowledged that the leptospirosis-carrying rodents could also invade other parts of the facility.

In an exclusive interview with Barbados TODAY at his office located at the male section in St Philip, Leacock revealed that management has had to be setting bait for the rats, which has not been working.

He disclosed that even after the health inspector recommended that specific action be taken to block an area at the bottom of the door to the room where the rodents were entering, the initial method also failed, forcing them to use alternate means.

“Yes, there were reports about rodents which we bait on a regular basis. In response to the recent report, one of the persons that we use came in the day after it was reported…did a thorough baiting…and we can’t do the traditional baiting because we are dealing with children; so we can’t have that kind of material floating around. So it has to be more discrete and more of the [rat] traps,” the juvenile correctional institution’s head stated.

Leacock added: “That was done. It didn’t work as well as we would have liked…and the public health inspector, one of them came from Maurice Byer; he did the inspection and we asked him for some suggestions to assist with the problem.

“He suggested that the area where one rat was observed, we should have it thoroughly cleaned.  The day after that, we had contacted a professional cleaning firm that we use…and the room was closed for one day to facilitate the cleaning.  They came the next day and did a thorough cleaning,” he told Barbados TODAY.

Leacock said the environmental health inspector from Maurice Byer returned to the correctional centre after the cleaning and expressed his satisfaction with the remedial work.

However, the GIS principal admitted that the health official advised them to place a strip at the bottom of the door to the room where the rats were gaining entry; and they did.

“That didn’t work…we put a metal one…and it’s a wooden floor. The metal didn’t work. So we are getting a heavy duty rubber strip…and that will satisfy,” the soon-to-be retired senior public officer disclosed.

Leacock, who plans to retire from the job he has held for 19 years in November, said there was concern that the rats might have also been entering the facility through the windows which do not have mesh.

“You would appreciate you can’t use the fly mesh. So, the maintenance officer at the Project Unit [Ministry of Transport and Maintenance], visited on two occasions last week and he was getting a quotation to get the mesh fabricated,” he said.

Leacock also explained that that original type of window, which was built by a company called Meridian, is no longer being manufactured by that firm.   According to him, it would therefore have to be custom-made by another source.

While attributing the rat problem to the existence of large tracks of nearby agricultural lands, the GIS head told Barbados TODAY the Ministry’s Project Unit has had to be routinely carrying out maintenance at the correctional institution.

He said even with the rodent problem being somewhat remediated, there is still need for additional baiting on the outskirts of the facility.

“We will do a heavier baiting on the outskirts. But as I indicated to you, we can’t do the traditional baiting because of our population to have any rat bait exposed…we don’t do that kind of thing on the inside.  So that will be done on the outskirts, the outer boundaries. This is something that we do all the time,” he declared.

Leacock also had other concerns with respect to the maintenance issues at the male and female facilities.

“One of the challenges that we have had is that, in the recent retrenchment process that Government had, we lost both of our general workers.  The one down there [in St Lucy] and the one up here [in St Philip]… that has affected us obviously. It has affected the girls more so than with the male residents,” he told Barbados TODAY.

“And it has been a challenge with the maintenance because there is no day-to-day [work] as we have had in the past. That is out of our purview. So there is not much we can do, so we just have to get creative,” he added.

The principal of the centre said management has therefore had to hire private persons to maintain the area as much as possible.

A source had earlier told Barbados TODAY that health inspectors from the Maurice Byer Polyclinic had ordered the administration to close the room and have it cleaned within a specified period.

“The rodents are such a pest to staff and the girls, that the girls are taking it upon themselves to kill them with anything in reach when seen. They are climbing through the windows and coming in. The entire place is a mess,” the source close to the institution had said.

The informant said the room in question, which stores keys, some medical supplies, toiletries and the switches for the lights, is situated upstairs on the outside of the dorms. emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb