The Bucharest City Hall plans to spend EUR 1 million on rodent and insect control in the city by year-end, if a draft project to be discussed next week at the Bucharest General Council goes through, Mediafax reported.

Although there are only two months left of the year, the City Hall says it could not sign a contract for these services sooner because of an existing litigation.

An auction to select a provider of rodent and insect control services was held in 2016 but the City Hall did not award a winner, according to Mediafax. One of the bidders however took the administration to court, claiming it had the best offer. The firm eventually won and the City Hall had to sign a contract with it for these services.

In the meantime, the rodent and insect control activities were performed by the City Hall through its own institutions, but at lower levels.

“It is not the fault of our administration that we are in this situation because the bid took place before the June 2016 election, during the administration that took over after former mayor Sorin Oprescu was arrested. Furthermore, this being a litigation, we could not sign a contract with another company, so the summer-time rodent and insect control was done with the help of our own institutions,” Aurelian Bădulescu, Bucharest deputy mayor, told Mediafax.

Bucharest mayor, Gabriela Firea, explained in September that the City Hall signed the rodent control services acquisition contract with the company that had won the bid. “Unfortunately summer is gone but it is good and useful to begin the rodent control activity [] with the company that won the bid. It will start working as quick as possible,” Firea said, quoted by Mediafax.

Rats are not a rare site in Bucharest parks or even larger streets. Furthermore, in recent years, many home owners and blocks of flats residents have resorted to contracting insect control services by themselves in order to deal with the increase in their numbers during the warm months.

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