Bengaluru: They're back! The city is being plagued by mosquitos and all the attendant illness that will come with it including malaria, dengue and chikungunya.
Homes next to empty plots are particularly vulnerable. Wherever water has been left to stagnate across the city, in the low lying areas are the new breeding grounds for the mosquitoes. Citizens have been repeatedly complaining on the increase in the mosquito menace but no-one's listening! Fogging, the cheapest and the most effective solution to the problem is not even being attempted by civic officials who have turned a deaf ear to pleas by city residents to deploy fogging machines.
Accepting that civic authorities had not conducted a concentrated fogging operation of the city, BBMP Mayor Gangambike admitted "In my recent inspection I found out that several areas in the city, fogging has not been done."
She also said that it is only after the area Corporator insists or the control room is receiving lot of complaints, that fogging is done.
When DC pointed out that the fogging that had been done so far has failed to kill the mosquitos and the larvae, the new Mayor said "There is proportion of the chemical to be mixed with water. Just to prove that they have done the fogging, many contractors dilute the chemical with huge amount of water. This ultimately fails to have any impact on mosquitoes because it is as good as spraying just plain water."
Mr Mohammad Rishan a resident of Cottonpet said that "From the last one month mosquito population has multiplied in such a way that we are not able to stand outside after sunset. We do not know when was the last time BBMP took up fogging of the area."
Particularly pertinent is his complaint that it is the children who are affected most as they fall ill very soon due to mosquito bites, with mosquito repellents largely ineffective as they are only a first line of defence.
The mosquito menace is not confined to Cottonpet alone, but affects the entire city. While there are no figures on the total number of complaints received by the BBMP control room on mosquito menace, people manning the control room maintain that the total number of calls is on the rise.
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