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Money meagre for mosquito control

Shahnaz Parveen
Due to lack of timely allocation of funds, Dhaka City Corporation's mosquito control drive has lost its pace this year, leading to unbearable mosquito menace in the city.
Mosquito control programmes of DCC zonal offices did not receive their first two instalments of the yearly budgetary allocation on time due to irregularities in financial statements in the previous years, sources said.
The zonal budget usually covers the cost of transport, machine operating cost and cleaning of water bodies. DCC's Mosquito Control Wing (MCW) purchases the necessary equipment, larvaecide and adulticide.
"The zonal executive officers were asked to explain the previous year's expenses, which delayed the allocation of the current fiscal year. Usually the allocation is made within July, but it delayed till mid November this year," said a high official of DCC.
'The process took time
because some of the officials were transferred recently and the recently appointed officials had difficulties explaining the past expenses," he added.
Mosquito eradication programme has been hampered seriously for the last five months because of the fund shortage while mosquito breeding continued at
an alarming rate.
Residents of the densely populated areas such as Mirpur, Pallabi, Moghbazar, Rampura, Mohammadpur, Rayerbazar, Jigatola, Badda, Khilgaon, Basabo, around Farmgate, in parts of Uttara and old town complain of unbearable mosquito menace.
Residents of DCC Zone-1
covering Sayedabad and the surrounding areas are the worst sufferers, according to another DCC official. He mentioned that too many water bodies with stagnant and dirty water are located there.
The upsurge of the bug also increased fear of diseases like malaria and dengue in the city.
Chief entomologist of the DCC Mosquito Control Wing (MCW) Dr Naseem-uj-Seraj on the other hand told Star City that cleaning of water hyacinth, spraying of larvaecide and adulticide in the water throughout the year. This year the corporation is going for more efficient Malarial Oil-B mainly sold by Padma oil in the country.
Larvaecide and adulticide work for only a few days while the malarial oil works for around two weeks, the official said.
About 21,000 litres of the malarial oil has been purchased recently and its use started a week ago. A total amount of50,000 litres of the liquid will be purchased, he added.
DCC officials are also speeding up mosquito control activities to rid the city of the pesky bug mainly for the comfort of the foreign visitors during election.
Meanwhile, a segment of the field level employees of various zonal officers told Star City that DCC do not provide vehicles for its ward-
based employees that L affecting the pace of the work.
A meagre amount ofTk 60 is provided to fogger machine operators a day. which is not enough to meei the current transport cost, the workers alleged.
Besides, for cleaning the stagnant waters, the corpo ration only has Tk 200 yearly allo cati o n for each worker.
For the mosquito control programme, DCC this year allocated a total of Tk 15 crore, which is mainly used for monitoring and surveillance. An additional Tk 2 crore has been allocated for the purchase of machinery.
To counter the bug in a city of more than one crore, DCC has 411 spray-men using 941 hand-spray machines. The number of fogger machine is 270, three in each zone.
Currently 38 wheelmounted spray machines and 10 power sprays are in operation. The corporation has another 18 ultra low volume (U1V) sprayers in its possession, but they arc lying idle in the store.