The first reaction of the Town Council was disappointing: since the rat was in my house, I should pay private pest busters to get rid of it. Only when I threatened to chase the rat back right back outdoors, did they understand how ludicrous that stance was, and agreed to send a pest buster ('just this once') to trap the rat.

The pest busters arrived at around noon. While they prepared traps in the balcony, the rat pushed aside the gully trap in the balcony and ran down into it. My wife's quick thinking in trapping the rat in the first place had thus gone to waste - the rat had escaped the professionals. The pest busters then taped the gully cover with masking tape and set some rat glue and poison around the balcony. That night, we noticed that the gully cover had been pushed opened. No rat, however, was in sight. I covered the trap and secured it again.

To no avail. On the morning of April 24, I noticed the gully cover was again opened, but I still could not see the rat anywhere. Nothing else was amiss, so we assumed that the rat had fled the premises. Just to be sure, I covered the gully cover in the balcony and, this time, placed a heavy object over it.

On April 25, my wife noticed our floor mat in the kitchen had moved from its original position towards the drainage hole. When repositioning the mat, she noticed that the edges of the mat showed signs of having been bitten. I called the Town Council again. My wife showed them the drainage hole. Yet the pest buster was still not able to capture the rat. Instead they set up more traps around the house.

I have now noticed a nest on the outside ledge of the block below my bedroom window, which the rat seems to have taken over. We also notice rats moving freely along the ledge. We have informed the Town Council but it is not doing anything about this. They seem to think it is enough to wait for the rat to come into my kitchen and consume the rat poison; which the rat has clearly learnt to avoid. It seems to me that the Town Council still think that it is not their problem once the rat enters my home.

Since the rat appeared, both my young sons have come down with unexplained rashes. While we have disinfected the house, as long as the rat remains uncaught, my sons and the many other children in the block are at risk. Surely expending some serious effort into nipping the problem in the bud is better than trying to control a rat infestation in multiple HDB apartments?

I hope the Town Council will act before my neighbours suffer as well as a result of the council's inaction.

Shahjehan s/o Ibrahim Kutty