Home
Action demanded over New York subway rats
12/01/2012
Some of New York's subway workers are highlighting the growing problem of the plague of rats on the system by setting up a site challenging subway users to send in the their most impressive pictures of the underground vermin.
The site was created by the Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 and is offering a free month-long subway pass to the commuter who sends in the best - or should it be worst? - photo of a subway rat.
Commuters are being encouraged to upload their photos to the specially set-up site, ratfreesubways.com, and many entries have already been posted showing the increasingly large creatures making off with pizza and other food dumped by passengers.
A TWU spokesman said that the problem of the rats in the subways was becoming untenable, both for users and for workers and called on the Metropolitan Transport Authority to take some decisive action about it.
"Rats are proliferating in the New York City subways," the spokesman said. "Aggressive rats are bolder about coming on to the platforms and have even been known to bite riders. They infest the refuse rooms where garbage is stored."
The union wants the authority to hire more cleaners, put more litter bins on subway platforms and carry out more frequent extermination programmes.
