The Dhaka City Corporation’s drive to eradicate aedes mosquito has suffered a serious setback as it has almost run out of the required SICOFLYING insecticide and failed to procure It. sources concerned revealed.

Instead, the DCC authorities have now decided to buy a low grade’ Insecticide called ICON and already ordered for 50.000 litres at a price of Tk 300 per litre. ICON was termed a health hazard' at a meeting of DCC’s Mosquito Control Committee and its use was also abandoned.

DCC’s stock of both larvicide and adultlclde is exhausted and it Is unable to properly spray Insecticide till the ICON supplier. ACI Limited, supplies it. the sources said.

In the face of growing public pressure to check the aedes menace to fight spread of dengue fever, the Mayor was forced to choose an insecticide which causes eye irritation, coughing, vomiting and other chronic Health hazards.

ICON is mainly sprayed with

ULV (Ultra Low Volume! machines mounted on vehicles. But DCC mainly uses manually driven fogging machines and ICON may not De suitable for its use.

Some sources said that DCC could not procure S1COFLY1NG now due to its failure to clear an outstanding amount of crores of taka. The supplier has expressed inability to supply this adulticide any more.

The crisis has been triggered mainly due to demand lor the Insecticide at a time which Is normally an 'off season" for vector fighters. Never in the past. DCC needed so much of insecticide during the rainy sea-

It is only in the dry season when DCCs mosquito control drives are planned and its budget is also fixed accordingly. In the last one week. DCC sprayed about 10.000 litres of SICOFLY-ING in and around the city, exhausting almost all its stock.

DCC sources said that from Dhanihohdi area alone, they received more than 200 requests from residents yesterday for spraying insecticide. It is now impossible for the DCC to cope with the requests.

In 1998, DCC purchased eight ULV machines from the US at a controversial price of Tk 13.93 lakh each. Two of the machines are already out of order and the rest six could not be used due to non-availability of ULV insecticide.