The Chennai Corporation will carry out fogging operations in all stormwater drains and along all streets every day.
The civic body on Saturday directed malaria workers to cover the entire 1,630 km of stormwater drains along bus routes and interior roads in its fogging operations. Earlier, the civic body had been fogging streets twice a week.
According to officials, the massive fogging operation will facilitate the reduction in malaria cases considerably. The total number of dengue cases has already come down to 12 in the first three months of 2013 when compared to the 79 dengue cases reported in the same period in 2012. The dengue cases have come down to zero in the north Chennai zones but a few cases are being reported in zones such as Perungudi, Adyar, Alandur and Kodambakkam. Malaria cases too have reduced in the past few months when compared to the same period last year but some zones such as Royapuram have reported malaria cases in this year.
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The Chennai Corporation has requested all residents’ welfare associations to nominate a person each to report any failure on the part of workers to carry out fogging operations in any street in their neighbourhood on a particular day. Residents’ associations have been requested to contact the zonal officers and register the phone number of their representatives.
Malaria workers on contract have been hired for all the 200 wards.
Additional workers have been hired for covering divisions having a large number of streets. Fogging of areas such as Kodungaiyur, Villivakkam, Saligramam and Velachery, where the total length of the streets is higher, was difficult earlier because of limited number of workers.
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The civic body started cleaning and desilting work along 68.71 km of major waterways such as Cooum and Adyar. The work will be completed in two months. Two machines near Kotturpuram on Adyar, two near Naduvankarai on Cooum, one in Buckingham Canal and one in Otteri Nullah are carrying out mosquito control operations.
Over 15 other smaller equipment along the banks of the waterways have started clearing weeds, debris and mosquito breeding sources.
The Corporation Council recently passed a resolution to distribute mosquito nets to residents along 16 minor and major waterways including the Cooum and Adyar rivers and the Buckingham Canal.