Corporation to revamp mosquito control measures

Civic body to use its conservancy workers for the job

The Coimbatore Corporation is all set to revamp its mosquito control measures.

The civic body will start deploying its conservancy workers for the mosquito control operations, according to City Health Officer K. Santhosh Kumar.

Thus far, the civic body had engaged persons on contract to act as domestic mosquito breeding checkers. The civic body would utilise their services for three or four months every year and then terminate the contract. But this time around, there was a change in the Government’s strategy.

As per the orders from the Commissioner and Director Municipal Administration and the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner, instead of engaging the workers, the Corporation would start using its conservancy workers for the job, Mr. Kumar said.

Corporation Commissioner K. Vijayakarthikeyan said that the civic body would deploy the strategy immediately because the disease graph for the past five years indicated that mosquito-related diseases started ascent in June, peaked in October-November and declined post-January.

As per this strategy, the Corporation had estimated the four lakh-odd households in its limits had been divided into blocks of 300 houses, which each conservancy worker would attend to over a six-day week.

This math had revealed that the Corporation would have to deal with around 1,300 blocks and it would require 13 workers a ward to do the job.

The job of the workers would be to check with the households in the allotted area if there were mosquito breeding sources or if mosquitoes bred. If so, they would alert the anti-mosquito scheme workers, who would carryout fogging exercise or use larvicide or adopt other measures to control mosquito population.

Mr. Vijayakarthikeyan said that once the civic body’s plan was vetted, it would send the same for approval to the Commissioner for Municipal Administration and Director for Municipal Administration and begin the task soon thereafter.