Nagpur: High drama prevailed at the Nagpur Municipal Corporation’s (NMC) headquarters on Friday as independent corporator Abha Pande resorted to one day hunger strike for their alleged lackadaisical approach towards preventing the spread of dengue.
Mayor Nanda Jichkar, who came to meet Pande, was found asking residents accompanying the corporator whether the locality is really under the grip of Dengue fever. Tempers ran high after mayor Nanda Jichkar, who had come to meet Pande, blamed the residents for the rise in dengue cases. She said that the onus is on residents too to keep a tab on their surroundings.
The agitating residents held the NMC guilty of the death of Anisha Gajanad Parate, a 14-year-old girl from Sai Nagar, who, according to them, died from dengue fever on Wednesday.
No sooner had the news of Parate’s death spread in the area than the local residents called on corporator Abha Pande and demanded that urgent action be taken.
According to Pande, the population of Nagpur is about 35 lakh. As per norms, there should be three health officers for the city. However, there is only one and the officer too is not a doctor but a MSc (Technician).
“If private doctors detect a dengue patient they do not inform the NMC. Why no action is being taken against such doctors? NMC teams do not go to pathology laboratories and hence they do not have the complete data,” Pande pointed out.
As per norms, a NMC health employee must survey 100 homes per day. However, this is not being done and mosquitoes breeding at houses without any control. The hand fogging machines run only for 45 minutes and they take between one and one-and-a-half hour to restart. NMC does not provide diesel to rerun the machine for 45 minutes, she pointed out.
Fogging machines should operate for three hours every day. Nobody checks whether the employees do this. An audit is necessary.
Officers are supposed to visit areas where dengue patients are found. NMC should check 400 to 500 homes in the adjacent area. The officials, however, just send their juniors to the spot.
The open drains built under IRDP are not administered any treatment. As per NMC norms, nets should be fitted on vent pipes. However, not a single vent pipe has a net. So where have the nets purchased by NMC gone? she asked.
The dengue patients should be provided free treatment at private hospitals at NMC’s cost. If necessary, NMC should seek help of state government. NMC staffers are not trained in mosquito control and even insecticides are sprayed after mixing them with water. This destroys their potency and they become ineffective.
According to her, NMC health staffers do not have any uniforms nor they have identity cards as a result many times people don’t allow them inside their homes.
NMC has claimed that it had surveyed 5.46 lakh houses and dengue larvae were found in 7,316 houses. If NMC is doing its job so diligently, why is dengue spreading in the city? NMC has not prepared a special plan for dealing with dengue as envisaged in Section 319 of Maharashtra Municipal Corporation (MMC) Act, she added.
