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Drive against mosquitos

CUTTACK: The Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC) is taking a fresh initiative to control the mosquito menace in the city. From Wednesday, the civic body is launching an ambitious programme for a massive indoor residual spray of insecticides to get rid of the problem.

“On an experimental basis, the insecticide called ‘Sulfac’, a compound of sulphur and phosphorous which has been proved effective against adult mosquitoes, would be sprayed in each house of all the slum areas in the city,” said health officer Niranjan Das.

“After its findings in the slum areas are reviewed, we will consider of extending the programme to rest of the city,” Dr. Das said.

“A team of 20 workers was selected for the purpose. Each worker would spray the insecticide in at least 40 houses in slum areas a day. We hope to cover the entire 25000-odd houses spread across some 300 slum areas of the city within a month,” the health official said.

He said that the civic body had also undertaken a drive to clear all the tertiary drains of the city and very soon ML oil would be sprayed in these drains to take care of the mosquito larvae.

The civic body had been constantly pulled up by the High Court for not able to tackle the mosquito menace effectively. Even the High Court had ordered for a vigilance probe into an alleged Rs. 75-crore ML oil purchase scam. To make the matters worse, the CMC, which has around 40 anti-mosquito fogging machines very often remain idle due to lack of maintenance. Even most of the 140-odd insecticide spray pumps of CMC were lying defunct without an attempt to repair them.

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