With rain likely, MCDS set to focus on anti-mosquito drive
THE CIVIC AGENCY HAS ALSO STARTED LEVYING ‘ADMINISTRATIVE CHARGE’ TO PERSUADE PEOPLE TO AVOID ANY WATER LOGGING
NEW DELHI: With rain and thunderstorm likely to hit the city during next five days, the Municipal Corporations has intensified drive to check mosquito breeding from Saturday.
“The rainfall will increase humidity and make the environment condition more conducive for breeding of mosquitoes. Also, we observed the World Health Day on Saturday and on this occasion, a week-long programme was launched to educate people in all 104 wards,” said B K Hazarika, health officer, South Corporation.
The civic agency has also started levying ‘administrative charge’ to persuade people to avoid any water logging. The charge may range from ₹50 to ₹50,000 depending on the size and nature of the property and scale of breeding.
“The concept was introduced last year after it was found that people were not taking steps to avoid water logging despite issuing multiple challans,” said a health department official.
“Till last week, the penalty was imposed at 168 properties and most of them were residential households. An amount of ₹26,350 was collected from these defaulters,” said the official.
FEWER HOUSES CHECKED
The move to intensify the drive has come at a time when the weekly action taken report issued by the MCDS has shown massive decline in the number of houses visited by dengue breeding checkers till March end.
Till March 31, the three MCDS have checked 47,28,585 lakh houses. In comparison, till March 31, 2017, a total of 70,47,207 houses and while in 2016, a total of 62,80,253 houses were visited.
The decline in number of visits has also impacted the number of houses found positive with mosquito breeding.
Till March 31 this year, the figure was 1830 while in March 2017 the houses found positive were 2369.
An official privy to the matter said that the decline is due to the two-week-long strike called by the Dengue Breeding Checkers last month. However, municipal official deny the charges.
“We covered more houses last year because numbers of dengue and malaria cases reported were high. We have increased our efforts,” said Yoginder Singh Mann, spokesperson, North Corporation.