Mosquito menace dents ‘smart city’ tag

Kakinada: Despite acquiring ‘Smart city’ tag to its credit, the civic body authorities of Kakinada have not been taking up sanitation works to avert mosquito menace. There are widespread allegations that the municipal health department in the last several months have not taken up desilting of drains and fogging in both major and minor drains which spread over more than 200 km across the city.

There are two major drains, the Cheedala Pora and storm water drain in the city. The two drains cover majority of the city particularly the old city area. These include Suryanarayanapuram, Ramakrishna Rao Peta, Jagannaickpur area, J Rama Rao Peta, Rechela Peta, Cheedala Pora, Sambamurty Nagar and other areas. Besides these, the drainage facility in the posh areas of the city including Gandhinagar, Rama Rao Peta, Pratap Nagar, Srinagar and Sriram Nagar was developed much later.

According to sources, there are 800-odd workers on permanent and outsourcing basis who work in Kakinada city health department. But in the last three months during the winter season no desilting or fogging for proper maintenance of drains was taken up. Resulting in sharp rise of mosquito menace as the days have gone by. Kakinada city CPM secretary Palivela Veerababu alleged that the municipal authorities at the behest of ruling TDP have been diverting the services of sanitation workers to other works.

Earlier, the services were diverted for NTR Beach Festival and now for the ongoing farmers meet at Sarpavaram to get name and fame for the ruling party, throwing the health issues of denizens of the city to the wind. When contacted municipal corporation health officer (MHO) Dr. B Sailaja said that due to work pressure during beach festival, they could not take up both desilting of drains and fogging work. We will resume the regular work very soon, she assured.