In the Lombardijenlaan in the Reeshof district of Tilburg, residents are struggling with cockroach nuisance. The creatures also enter the houses on the car, in the rubber and through the window. According to residents, the crawlers come from hedges that urgently need to be maintained. And actually the municipality should solve something like this, but those attempts have not been successful so far. The bugs can spread diseases and fungi and people can be allergic to their feces.
“It’s the German cockroach,” says one of the residents firmly. And according to the municipality of Tilburg, it is a relatively new species that they do not see very often in the Netherlands. In any case, they are smaller, faster and attract the heat. “So they sit on your car,” says the resident. “And when you open the car door in the morning, the entire edge is full of cockroaches. With hundreds of creatures on the roof.”
“When it was at its worst, I left the car with my parents for a week,” says a resident. If she isn’t careful, they will crawl into the top floor through her attic window at dusk. “I sprayed all the joints with this,” she says, as she produces a can of cockroach poison from next door.
In this way, the residents themselves try to keep the animal away, because so far there has been no solution from the municipality. They have already made attempts, for example by pruning, but no sustainable solution has yet been found.
Moreover, the lack of maintenance in the Reeshof is not new. The district falls into the C category when it comes to the maintenance levels of the municipality of Tilburg. The center is category A and tops the list. Reeshof can often close at the back when they request maintenance or work.
“I’m getting itchy just talking about it.”
As a result, there are more weeds on the municipal land, the hedges grow higher and blown-off leaves remain there longer. It is a paradise for the cockroach.
“I get itchy just talking about it,” says her neighbor. “I also had a really bad night’s sleep. Then they just sit against the screen of your bedroom window.” And that is not an appetizing idea. “Normally it is always so neat here and we do everything we can to keep it tidy. But if the municipality does nothing about this, we really have to sound the alarm.”
And that is extremely frustrating for residents. The pests are the final straw. There is still a lot of overdue maintenance to be done, but cockroaches are really going too far for the residents. The local residents write a letter to PvdA municipal councilor Bea Mieris, who in turn asks council questions about whether and when the creatures will be removed.
“What if you want to sell a house here? Or if your company is here?”
“B and W still have to answer that,” says the municipality of Tilburg. “First the council, then the street.” They are not yet allowed to reveal much about the content, except that the cockroaches caught by residents are currently being examined in a specialized center. The municipality must then consider a way to get the uninvited guest out of the street for good.
So wait and see. But it is clear that Lombardijenlaan is eager for a solution. The cans of cockroach poison at the local drugstore have been sold out for weeks. In addition, the fear of a deteriorated image weighs like a stone on their stomach. “What if you want to sell a house here? Or if your company is here? If people hear that you have cockroaches, that is not very good advertising,” says a concerned resident.