As part of its efforts to prevent dengue and control mosquitoes, the Coimbatore Corporation has launched fogging operations across the city on Monday.
Commissioner T.K. Ponnusamy told The Hindu that after collecting 15 lorry loads of discarded tyres and other container-like structures including coconut shells to prevent stagnation of fresh water, the Corporation has begun fogging operations across the city.
The Corporation had dumped the tyres and covered them at its dump yard in Vellalore.
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The Corporation's conservancy and anti-malarial wing workers would carry out the operations in the mornings and evenings for the next few days. The workers would focus on slums and areas where people live in small houses.
To do so, the Corporation had allotted two workers for every ward and powered them with power sprayers and hand-held fogging machines.
Now each ward has a sprayer and fogging machine.
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In addition to those workers, the Corporation has asked conservancy workers to spray bleaching powder across the city.
Mr. Ponnusamy also said that the Corporation had enough stock of medicines, chemicals and larvicides to destroy virus-carrying mosquitoes. To take stock of the situation, the Mayor had conducted a meeting with all officials and asked them to take up cleaning works on a war footing.
Supervisors monitoring the work on the field said that the workers would first focus on slums and Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board and Housing Board tenements. The workers would fog houses on three streets a day and complete the task at the earliest. They said that the officials had asked them to work on Sundays as well. Prior to fogging, the workers would inform the public through a public address system asking them to close utensils with food and water containers and then carry out the fogging operations.