BAGUIO CITY — Baguio City General Services Office (GSO) Assistant Head Ma. Guadalupe C. Della acknowledged the severity of the rat infestation at the Baguio City Public Market.

Della appreciated the efforts of market stall owners to get rid of the rats. However, she said large parts of the market have become breeding sites. With the cooperation of stall owners, whom she said are aggressively cleaning their surroundings, the GSO provided improvised drowning drums over a recent weekend to help catch the rodents.

Under new directives issued by Mayor Benjamin Magalong, the city will strip away any financial rewards or incentives previously offered to vendors for maintaining cleanliness. Instead, the local government will enforce strict accountability, threatening a one-week closure of any market section found to have persistent rodent problems to allow for thorough pest control operations. The administration also intends to outsource the extermination and sanitation work to a third-party pest control provider to systematically target breeding grounds.

The ongoing anti-rat efforts have historically relied on a multi-agency response, spearheaded by the Market Division of the City Treasurer's Office, alongside twice-daily garbage collection to prevent waste accumulation. The Sanitation Division under the Health Services Office (HSO) has also maintained aggressive inspections of restaurants, retail stores, and street food stalls.

Despite these combined efforts, local officials admit that uncollected waste continues to provide a food source for rodents, directly threatening public health and the reputation of Baguio City.

The necessity for harsher penalties is underscored by the city's past failures to control the rodent population through community-driven contests. In previous years, Baguio implemented a rat challenge that offered cash rewards to residents and vendors for every rat caught and surrendered, turning pest control into a bounty system. While the initiative initially gained traction and resulted in the capture of thousands of rats at the public market, the lack of sustained institutional enforcement allowed the rodent population to rebound.

Magalong expressed disappointment during a recent market inspection, observing that some vendors immediately resumed dumping meat waste into drainage canals shortly after a major cleanup operation concluded. The rapid return to poor sanitation practices prompted the decision to hold stall owners legally and operationally responsible for their respective areas.

By replacing cash incentives with the threat of business closures, the city government hopes to force a permanent behavioral change among vendors, although the strategy places much of the burden of addressing structural sanitation lapses on the stakeholders.