On September 2, the Seville City Council officially announced a preventive plan for health inspection and control in schools. Today, students are returning to the classrooms and there are schools that still do not know if the cleaning workers will appear. With this project, the council led by José Luis Sanz (PP) has proposed that in this new school year, no child should encounter a rat in their place of learning.
This is what happened last February at the Borbolla school, when a child grabbed a rat and it hit him to get away. The incident did not go any further, but the case set off alarm bells. The plan will initially be applied in 58 of the 109 centres over which the City Council has authority, although according to the Council, only three of them had reported the presence of rodents last year.
One of these schools was the Colegio San José Obrero. Its director, Mercedes Ruiz, explains that they found a rat in one of its classrooms in June. However, despite the fact that the announcement of the “rat extermination” plan was made on September 1, when the Cleaning Delegate, Evelia Rincón, posted it on X, There has been no news from the centre. “There is no one working on this at the moment and I have not been informed if any workers are coming,” says the director.
We have already activated ✅ a preventive inspection and control plan in 58 schools to avoid ❌ rats and cockroaches in these centers.
🥽Specialists are already treating indoor and outdoor areas based on the needs reported by school officials… pic.twitter.com/h6B5QNdmsY
— Jose Luis Sanz (@jlsanzalcalde) September 1, 2024
Complaints and videos about the presence of rats in different streets of Seville have been circulating on the networks for some time, published by citizens in the form of complaints. They can be seen in Seville East or in more central areas such as San Pablo or Triana. The City Council also had to close the Huerta del Perejil park due to a plague of these rodents last week. María Auxiliadora González, 63, lives in an area very close to this park and she declares without hesitation that she has seen rats. “I work in a nursery that is on the ground floor and there are no problems there because they disinfect, but you can see them on the street. The area is not dirty, they do clean it quite a bit, but there are rats,” she explains. Now at the entrances to the premises there is a sign that reads: “Closed for rat extermination treatments.”
Rodents in the neighborhoods
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One of the flags in the previous electoral campaign of the team of the mayor, José Luis Sanz, was to achieve a cleaner capital. “Seville is a city invaded by dirt and rats,” proclaimed Sanz in March 2023. Apart from the plan for schools, the mayor plans to sign a contract for 500,000 euros to eliminate these animals throughout the city. The cleaning delegate acknowledges that “there is a lot to do” and apologized in X on Sunday, although she also emphasized that “a lot has been done.” Rincón stressed that the pest management and control service is greatly reduced, but that they do not stop intervening in all the complaints they receive.
The spokesperson for FAMPA Sevilla (Federation of AMPAS), Rocío Bejínez, says that this plan was one of the measures that they had been demanding for years, although she regrets that action is being taken once the problem has been reported, instead of having been carried out before the reports of rats were notified. “We know that the AMPAS and in many cases the management teams have not been aware that these actions are going to be carried out in their centres,” insists Bejínez. She explains that they have found out about it through the press and official channels. The City Council considers that the AMPAS do not have to be informed of when intervention is going to take place in the schools.
FAMPA demands that these preventive measures, which from its point of view are always necessary for the correct maintenance of public schools, do not depend on shock treatments. Bejínez proposes that this programme not be limited to the 58 centres in which it is going to act, but that it be extended to “all public educational centres” in the municipality of Seville. The council does plan that the 109 centres under its jurisdiction will end up entering into this preventive plan.
When Mayor Sanz announced the 500,000 euro contract on Monday, he took the opportunity to criticise the fact that the previous budget was 30,000 euros, which was a budget carried over from the previous PSOE mandate. The socialists claim that Sanz only takes into account the budget allocated to Zoosanitary (municipal centre for animal protection and control) and that he should also include the amounts spent on Emasesa (municipal water company) for wells and drains and the one for Parks and Gardens.
The PSOE in Seville criticises the fact that the City Council blames the former management of the socialist team fifteen months after the change of government. “It is typical of someone who does not want to assume responsibility,” they say. Susana Hornillo, a councillor for Podemos, has described the situation as a “health crisis”. Hornillo criticises the Popular Party for not having hired workers from the municipal labour pool and for not having expanded the workforce of the public cleaning company, Lipasam.
“Solutions are not coming,” complains the Barrios Hartos neighbourhood platform. María Carmen Priego is the spokesperson for the association and adds that she had rats in her flat “being on the fifth floor” and points out that in Pino Montano (very close to the Huerta del Perejil park) there is a huge infestation. Priego blames the City Council for not having received a response to a letter they sent in February asking for explanations for the situation in the Distrito Norte area and criticises that the situation is not new. “There are no good rat extermination programmes, we have been saying this for years and things have not changed.”
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