With the beginning of monsoon, Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) has pulled up its socks to deal with the problems of vector borne diseases and water logging in the city.
Teams of RMC are visiting door to door to tackle the larvae of dengue and chikungunya mosquitoes. City Manager Sandeep Kumar said, “We have identified those areas which witnessed the outbreak of these vector borne diseases last year and are going to every household in these wards to check for water logging and fresh water collected in the houses.”
At present the drive is being organised at five wards, ward number 15, 16, 21, 22 and 23. However there is a plan to cover the entire city once these places are done with.
"A major problem we are facing is that people are not ready to accept that the larvae can be breeding in their houses too. They blame the drains but refuse to understand that the larva of dengue and chikungunya mosquitoes breed in fresh water," Kumar said.
"In most of the houses, it is found in water stored for use or collected in abandoned urns and pots," he added.
Kumar informed that the mosquitoes carrying these diseases cannot fly for more than a radius of seven to eight metres so it is easy to identify the breeding point.
Meanwhile, a roster has been prepared by the health department of RMC for fogging. “The fogging chemical has been changed and this time we are using water based chemical instead of the previous diesel based chemical. This is better for the environment,” Kumar said.
With the problem of water logging and overflowing of drains being common during monsoon, leading to inconvenience of people, the corporation is also taking steps to deal with clogged drains.
Additional Municipal Commissioner (AMC), Girija Shankar Prasad said, “All the zonal supervisors have been directed to keep a tab on the areas prone to water logging when it rains and take immediate action if they come across such problem."
Earlier this week, water logging was observed at Kanke Road, one of the posh localities of the city just a kilometer away from the CM house, after it rained heavily for a few hours. The commuters, especially those riding bikes had to face a major problem as the water on the roads reached knee level.
