Rodent (gnaver) crisis leaves thousands hungry – Rats have devastated the crops of farmers
BANGKOK, 22 April 2010 (IRIN) – More than 40.000 people in southeastern Bangladesh’s remote Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) are still food insecure despite a three-year battle against rats, aid officials say.
An infestation of rats, attracted by flowering bamboo, has seen the destruction of crops, and affected communities who depend on bamboo sales to boost their incomes.
– The bamboo flowering and rodent crisis that started in 2007 is not yet over, John Aylieff, country director for the World Food Programme (WFP), which works in the six most affected sub-districts, told IRIN from Dhaka.
– Although the situation is improving, the loss of crops for a third year running has left communities extremely vulnerable, he said.
The rats are now declining in numbers, but the bamboo flowering event has upset the ecosystem, Aylieff said, resulting in further crop damage in 2009, caused mostly by wild pigs as well as the rats.
According to an assessment by the UN and the government in early 2008, around 130.000 people, or about 10 percent of CHT’s population, have been affected by the current rat crisis.
– This population, isolated and remote, has faced successive shocks over the last few years – the rodents, the loss of bamboo and the pigs – with grave humanitarian consequences, said Milko Van Gool, the European Union’s acting head of delegation in Bangladesh.
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