By Delisa Thwala
Staff at the Mbabane Magistrate Court are having a hard time working and being in their offices thanks to the awful smell that haunts the hallways and offices.
According to the staff members, which include Magistrates, Court interpreters, and officers there are dead rats in some parts of the magistrate offices.
The rats have been there for days, hence the deadly smell that has made a simple thing like drinking coffee unbearable.
In addition to the health and sanitation risks introduced by mice and rats, when they invade the job site or work facility, rodents can cause quite a bit of damage.
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A walk around some of the offices proved the complaints by the staff were true. A newly dead rat was found trapped in a wall wiring in one of the filing rooms.
In another office, a foul smell hogged the entire floor.
“We love our jobs, but we are finding it hard coming to work every day because we are forced to bear the smell of dead rats.
It is an intoxicating smell we cannot,” said one staff member on condition of anonymity.
Another said, “We do not want to leave work early or not coming in at all but now we find ourselves working in passages with no proper tools because we are running away from the smell,” said another staffer.
The rats would seem to find home in some dirty parts of the entire building or roam around during day and night, they are later trapped by electricity wirings and instantly die.
n one of the offices visited by reporters, there were over a thousand yellow files piled on cabinets and the floor.
It was not made clear by the staff who is responsible for clearing out this mess or removing the rats.
One staff member said, “We have tried perfumes, detergents, Madubula and all you can think of it stinks,” said the staff member.
According to the World Health magazine when mice or rats chew on cords and cables they can cause damage to the infrastructure, disable electrical systems and computers, and introduce fire hazard risks.
Sanelisiwe Makhanya, an Environmental health officer said the situation at the Mbabane Magistrate sounded dire and needs urgent attention.
She said rodents can spread diseases, like hantavirus and rat bite fever, that can be very harmful to humans.
“Infection is usually caused by the dust created when droppings, urine, or nesting materials are disturbed.
The first signs of rodents usually appear before you ever see a rat or a mouse,” she said.
In addition, she said this could have been handled during regular inspections of the work site and be on the lookout for the classic signs of rodents: droppings and gnaw marks.
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Rodent droppings and gnaw marks are usually spotted out of plain sight in places like cabinets and drawers, or behind larger equipment.
“Hantavirus is transmitted to humans from the dried droppings, urine, and saliva of mice and rats.
Hantavirus begins as a flu-like illness with fever, chills, and muscle aches, but if not treated promptly, it can rapidly progress to a life-threatening condition as the lungs fill with fluid leading to respiratory failure,” she said.
She further said anyone working in rodent-infested buildings is at increased risk of hantavirus, particularly during dusty clean-up activities.
Makhanya emphasized that if a rodent infestation at work is ignored, all workers in the area can be at risk. Any activity that puts workers in contact with rodent droppings, urine, saliva, or nesting materials is unsafe.
