Recently, news and videos of bed bugs or ‘surot,’ rats and even cockroaches supposedly at our premier NAIA Terminals have made the rounds on flooded the social media.
I hate to say this, but I am not too convinced that such pests have indeed stormed our airports all of a sudden and all at once.
Without insinuating anything, I would like to share a little story about what happened to a friend’s restaurant, way before the stories on pests at the airports came about.
A supposed customer complained that the food hanging in the said restaurant had an insect crawling on the stick from which the food hung, just like what we see in Chinese restaurants.
The owner dared the customer to prove his allegation, knowing full well that no insect could ever manage to crawl up the hanging stick because it is very slippery and if you inspect their kitchen it is too clean one can just sleep in it.
My point here is this. In the case of the first post showing a woman with bites from the bed bugs or ‘surot,’ I may be a bit convinced, because rattan chairs, where the netizen claims she sat and got the bites from, really is one place where ‘surot’ may thrive.
However, in the case of the succeeding reports showing the bed bugs crawliing out from the holes of steel gangchairs, followed by rats and cockroaches supposedly roaming around the NAIA terminals, I have serious doubts and have a really hard time convincing myself as to their truthfulness.
I have been in touch with a good number of friends who have been working in the airport terminals for a very long time now and according to them, these kinds of things never, ever happened before.
Why all of a sudden, the existence of pests like bed bugs, rats and cockroaches came into being all at the same time is really, for me, suspect, coming at a time when the management of airport changed hands shortly before the issue came to the fore.
Sources tell me that there could be a sinister plot to create a scenario that would necessitate a change in the pest control service providers.
First, it is known to us that bed bugs, for instance, usually do thrive in warm, wooden spaces, instead of in steel chairs that are located in cold places like the airport. For the longest time, the said gangchairs have been there and at no instance were they reported to have been infested with bed bugs.
Granting that these are true for the sake of argument, it’s not like our airports are the only ones where a bed bug, a rat or a cockroach was ever found.
In other more progressive countries like Paris, Hong Kong and Korea, these pests are not unheard of but they have kept the issue low key and it was like it never happened.
Here in our country, our own citizens tend to have the propensity to hype negative things without any regard as to the overall outcome or effects of such actions.
Sometimes too, some scheming businessmen are willing to sacrifice even the country’s image in the name of profit. Sad, but true.
