Councillors nail Corpn health standing committee chairman’s mosquito lie

Chennai, March 17:
Reacting sharply to the Corporation standing committee (health) chairman A Manivelan’s claim that mosquito menace had been contained satisfactorily in the city, Congress party councillor from Ward-124 Susila Gopalakrishnan on Wednesday condemned his statement as unacceptable and dumped it as a pack of lies.
Expressing her views at the special discussion on 2010-11 civic body budget at Ripon Building here, Susila Said, “The committee chairman’s pat for the Corporation’s health department in containing the menace is unacceptable to several councillors like me as the claim is far from true.”
“I myself was affected in Chikungunya disease spread by mosquitoes two months ago and even now while addressing the very meeting here, I was not fully recovered from the effects of the illness,” Susila said.
During his speech on budget earlier in the day, Corporation standing committee (health) chairman A Manivelan said that the civic body’s health and family welfare department was performing well and spread of mosquitoes had been effectively controlled.
Mocking the Mayor M Subramanian’s introductory budget speech (on Monday) where he said the mosquito menace had been fully contained, CPM councillor from Ward-59 Devi said, “While reality on the menace was something different and not at all contained, I suspect the word ‘contained’ might have been wrongly printed in Mayor’s speech.”
She also questioned the quality of chemical sprays used to kill mosquitoes in the civic body.
K Dhansekaran, DMK councillor from Ward-130 and Zone 9 chairman, also lambasted the civc body for its methods to contain mosquitoes by the Corporation.

“Fogging machine mounted vehicles need to move very slow so that the chemical smoke could reach every vulnerable points in residential areas, but the civic body’s vehicles always keep themselves in high speed which ultimately reduces impact on ground and allow breeding to continue.”
Replying to the councillors accusation on mosquitoes, Mayor Subramanian said, “The allocations to eradicate mosquito menace in the city has been increased considerably in the budget and the civic body had spent nearly Rs 1.2 crore to procure chemical sprays last year.”
For the 2010-11 period also, we have earmarked the same Rs 1.2 crore for chemical sprays and also have plans to utilise latest techniques to contain the winged monsters, the Mayor added.