LUDHIANA: Councillors in Ludhiana will be given small fogging machines on Monday to start fogging in their areas. Interestingly, the MC had started the fogging in the month of April, which has been discontinued in some areas in July, when it is required the most.
Sources said fogging was stopped after mayor Balkar Sandhu asked the officials not to do fogging with big machines, instead of giving small machines to the councillors.
However, the number of small machines are insufficient because the number of wards has increased and some of the machines are non-functional too.
The
district health department has also declared the months of July, August and September, as sensitive months for the spread of diseases like dengue,
malaria and chikungunya. Due to rainfall in past few days, people have been complaining about mosquito-breeding and demanding that fogging should also be increased. Although the number of wards have been increased from 75 to 95, number of functional hand-held machines available is 65. So, it will become difficult for the officials to meet the demand.
Mayor Sandhu, while talking over phone on his way back home from Amarnath Yatra, said MC is not financially strong enough to invest in fogging. Moreover a lot of medicines get wasted at the time of fogging with big machines. He said they will start fogging with small machines through councillors, who knows their areas better. New machines will also be procured shortly.
MC commissioner Jaskiran Singh said, “Fogging has been stopped in some of the localities for the time being due to financial problem. But we have asked to conduct fogging in high-risk areas.” He said they will resume fogging in rest of the city when financial scarcity gets over.
However, the residents kept on demanding for the fogging in their areas. Sumit Mahajan, a resident of
Upkar Nagar, said mosquitoes have started troubling people in the area and water stagnation has increased the chances of breeding of mosquitoes. At this time fogging should not be discontinued. He demanded that authorities should pay attention towards this requirement.
79 machines for 17.68L people
There are only 79 fogging machines for 17.68 lakh population of city within MC limits. The MC has 14 big machines which remain under the control of the civic officials. However, MC had purchased 75 hand-held machines too which are usually being operated by the councillors in their respective wards. But 10 hand held machines are non-functional for a long time. The members of
finance and contracts committee have approved purchase of 39 new hand-held fogging machines, but civic body is yet to purchase them.
‘Didn’t receive fogging schedule’
The district epidemiologist Dr Ramesh Kumar said, “We have not received fogging schedule from the civic officials for last two months, reason best known to them. These three-four months are crucial for vector-borne diseases, so fogging is a must.” He said they have already started checking in the city for locating mosquitoes. Places, where stagnant-water problem persists, have been sprayed.