Anti-larvae drive: KMC calls high-level meeting on June 19

Kolkata: The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has convened a high-level meeting on June 19 with senior officials of the Centre and the state government as part of the anti-larvae drive.

The meeting will be attended by senior officials of Metro Railway, Eastern Railway, BSNL, Kolkata Port Trust, Satyajit Roy Film and Television Institute, state Public Works department. Senior KMC officials of the health department will also be present at the meeting.

The civic authorities will discuss in detail the steps taken by these agencies to keep their establishments clean. Senior KMC officials said drives have been conducted in Central and state government establishments, hospitals and educational institutions along with private housing complexes and individual residential buildings to see whether the garbage had been cleared or not or whether the accumulated water has been cleaned. But these drives are not enough and to make anti-larvae campaigns successful, cooperation between the state and Central government establishments are an absolute necessity. The civic officials said used plastic tea cups and bottles, broken furniture kept on rooftops and empty cans serve as potential breeding grounds for mosquitoes. The larvae take seven days to grow into adults and so if drives are conducted twice a week, the mosquito population can easily be checked.

It may be mentioned that the KMC has been conducting anti-larvae drives from January as the breeding pattern of the mosquitoes has changed due to global warming. The state Urban Development department has given Rs 4 crore to the KMC to conduct intense campaigns against malaria and dengue.

Debashis Biswas, Chief Vector Control Officer of the KMC, said: "Cooperation of people from all walks of life is needed. If the masses and KMC will work hand-in-hand, the number of malaria and dengue cases will fall drastically."