As rains lash city, residents urge MC to start fogging

LUDHIANA: With heavy rains lashing the city as monsoon begins, residents are worried about the water getting accumulated and becoming breeding grounds for mosquitoes. They have urged the civic officials to start fogging in residential areas at the earliest, to avoid vector-borne diseases to spread.
Meanwhile, the municipal corporation (MC) is waiting for the temperature to come down a bit before they start fogging.The officials have, however, already started challaning the violators if larvae are found breeding in their houses or shops.
The medical officer at MC health wing, Dr Vipul Malhotra said, “Usually fogging begins in July, but temperature is still above normal so we are waiting for it to come down. We are ready with fogging devices and medicine as almost 5000 litre of medicine is already in stock.” He said joint teams of health department and the MC are going to the field to keep a check on larvae, and are also issuing challans to the violators.
But residents seek action now. Model Town resident Inderjit Singh said, “When mosquito breeding takes place, the fogging should be done at that time so breeding can be controlled at an initial stage. Once breeding happens, mosquitoes create problems for the residents. Most of the time, dengue cases are not even reported as people prefer going to nearby clinics which are beyond clutches of health or any other department.”
The residents also said that most of the time fogging happens in selective areas, and they asked the officials to cover all the areas intensively so vector-borne diseases remain under control.
Another resident from Gurdev Nagar, Jyoti Sharma said, “The civic body does not have adequate facilities to handle fogging in the entire city, and in entire season every locality gets the turn once or twice maximum. Better fogging technology should be introduced to control vector-borne diseases.”
Last year, fogging had already started in July, but this time it has still not kicked off. The officials shared that over 100 challans have already been issued, and more would be issued in the coming days.