Carleton maintenance staff will be sending a pest-control company to investigate after students spotted a cockroach at Oliver’s Pub Oct. 27.
The bug was seen by third-year history student Brandon Wallingford, who took a photo of the cockroach on his cellphone.
“There was a cockroach. Right in the middle, scurrying about. So there was a bit of an attempt to catch it, [and] well, stomp it,” said Delroy Dyer, a third-year political science student who was with Wallingford and others when the incident took place.
Ottawa Public Health said they came on Nov. 8 to check for the presence of cockroaches. During their visit, they said there is no evidence of more cockroaches in the pub.
This is the second time Ottawa Public Health has visited Oliver’s since September, when the city performed a health inspection of food businesses on campus.
Chris Infantry, Carleton University Students’ Assocation vice-president (student life), said although there may have been one cockroach at Oliver’s, it may have come from the tunnels or the loading docks beside the Unicentre.
“The university centre is like a 60-year-old building, so there are cockroaches in the building for sure,” he said. “Do we take preventative measures to make sure they’re not infested at Oliver’s? One hundred per cent, yes.”
He said that in addition to having a pest-control company check Oliver’s every month, CUSA has its own maintenance staff, which checks and cleans the pub daily.
“So they clean look under the fridges, the freezers, things of that sort. And in Oliver’s kitchen, we have no infestation,” he said.
Darryl Boyce, assistant vice-president (facilities management and planning), said he was surprised to hear about the cockroach.
“We’ve come across [cockroaches] occasionally, but no major infestations that we’re aware of,” Boyce said. “I checked internally here and we were not aware of any cockroach problems in Oliver’s.”
“We’ve contacted our pest-control company and asked them to check out the place. Prior to that, nobody called us to say there was an issue,” Boyce said.
Boyce said he expects the company, Orkin Pest Control, to visit Oliver’s by the end of the week.