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Public Health / Sanitation


GVMC staff on drive to end mosquito menace

Friday, 15 September 2017 11:26 administrator
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The Hindu         15.09.2017   

GVMC staff on drive to end mosquito menace

Mosquitoes kill nearly three quarters of a million people each year worldwide and cause sickness in millions more. Malaria alone is responsible for more than half of the mosquito-related deaths, predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a recent US Agency for International Development (USAID) report.

Mosquitoes also transmit dengue, lymphatic filariasis, chikungunya and Japanese encephalitis.

This highlights the importance of control and elimination of mosquitoes.

The malaria staff of the Public Health Department of the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC) has taken up fogging in various areas of the city where malaria cases have been reported.

Spraying of oil balls and larvicides was done in 849 identified places to kill the moquioto larvae.

The staff members also educated residents of various slums on the need to keep their surroundings clean and to allow water stagnation, according to A. Hemanth, Chief Medical Officer of GVMC.

It is high time people also realised their responsibility of ensuring there was no water stagnation around their homes.

The water storage containers should be properly covered.

The waste water which collects in the tray behind the refrigerator, the water from the Air Condition outdoor unit and other sources should be regularly emptied at least once a week to prevent the breeding of mosquitoes.

 

Civic officer must be held liable for open manhole, says retired judge

Friday, 01 September 2017 08:16 administrator
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The Times of India     01.09.2017  

Civic officer must be held liable for open manhole, says retired judge

MUMBAI: The civic ward officer should be held accountable and liable for this lapse of an open manhole in which Dr Deepak Amrapurkar died, said a recently retired Bombay high court judge, Justice V M Kanade, on Friday, hours after the body was found. Legal experts said civic administration or even officials concerned must be held personally liable for the loss due to their negligence.

"An open manhole is definitely a civil negligence even if the floods were unforeseen. The BMC is liable to pay compensation," said the former judge.

Like Justice Kanade, other legal experts say the civic administration is liable to compensate the family for the death of Amrapurkar, who never reached home after he left Bombay hospital on August 29 during the deluge. "Though the death is monumentally tragic, it can't be said the civic administration can be held criminally liable. There can be no FIR registered against officials under section 304A (death due to negligence) in this case, but it is certainly a case of civil liability, where the liability must be fixed on an officer/s concerned who then must be ordered to personally compensate from his or their pockets."

"The least the BMC could have done was to create a barricade or a signage near the dangerous spot," added Kanade. "Whether it is criminal negligence or not is debatable."

The 58-year-old doctor is believed to have fallen in to an open manhole. A short walk from Elphinstone Road to his house nearby proved to be his last. His body was discovered on Friday morning at a drain near Worli. The doctor's death has disturbed the society and highlighted the lack of civic preparedness and its "continuing negligence", said lawyers.

The BMC can't shrug its liability, said lawyer Sujay Kantawala.

A query under RTI Act in 2015 had revealed that 12 roads alone had 20 open manholes. The civic response was that the cover thefts were on the rise. But there has been no move to use technology to ensure instant alerts when a cover goes missing to replace them or place red flags.

When the administration fails to do its duty, it amounts to negligence and attracts the law of tort when a member of the public suffers as a result of such negligence.

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Gaping manholes in cities has led to deaths earlier. In 2007, the death of a boy who fell in a manhole in Kolkata too had attracted a rap from the HC there.

Meanwhile, the Indian Medical Association (IMA), Mumbai branch, passed a resolution on Friday to file a PIL over the tragic death of Dr Amrapurkar.
 

NMMC targets breeding spots of mosquitoes

Tuesday, 22 August 2017 10:44 administrator
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The Hindu           22.08.2017

NMMC targets breeding spots of mosquitoes

With a few days left for the Ganesh festival, the health department of the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) is taking all measures to check mosquito breeding in the pandals.

“We launched a drive a fortnight ago. We have also begun checking for breeding grounds at workshops and pandals to tackle malaria and dengue,” said Dr. Deepak Paropkari, medical officer of health, NMMC.

Dr. Ujwala Oturkar, officer in-charge of the malaria department, said, “We have covered all the workshops and 190 pandals. Fumigation is being conducted every week.”

The civic body has printed two lakh pamphlets to distribute among devotees explaining breeding and the steps to prevent it.

 

City is ODF: GHMC

Thursday, 17 August 2017 07:26 administrator
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The Hindu        17.08.2017  

City is ODF: GHMC

Based on the undertakings given by the corporators from different wards, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation has declared the city of Hyderabad as Open Defecation Free (ODF).

The preliminary announcement that all the 150 wards of the city were ODF, came on Wednesday, on which the GHMC Commissioner has invited objections, complaints, and suggestions, if any, to be submitted in written form before August 28.

Under the Swachh Survekshan Mission initiative of the central government, the GHMC had begun to construct individual and public toilets wherever necessary.

A total of 1975 individual household latrines were constructed, apart from 384 public and community toilets. Wherever space was a problem community toilets were built, and where the location is under dispute, pre-fabricated toilets were installed.

Of the 384 public/community toilets, 135 were built in Build-Operate-Transfer mode, 109 were pre-fabricated, 46 were by Sulabh, 17 were She e-Toilets, and 20 were community toilets.

In addition to these, 44 community toilets are under construction under the BOT mode, and tenders have been called for 25 more.

Twenty-five She e-Toilets too are under progress, a statement from the corporation said.

Besides, the GHMC has convinced about 295 fuel stations and 390 hotels and restaurant owners to open the toilets on their premises for use by general public.

Several awareness programmes are being conducted at circle and zonal levels for arresting open urination, besides display of posters at the public toilets, open defecation/urination spots to sensitise the public. In a few cases where people are not utilising the toilets despite availability, they are being garlanded and fines are being levied. A total of 225 such instances were fined, and an amount of Rs. 38,120 has been collected since April, 2016, the statement said.

 

Civic body gears up for reclamation of dumping yard through biomining

Thursday, 17 August 2017 07:20 administrator
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The Hindu    17.08.2017  

Civic body gears up for reclamation of dumping yard through biomining

Vijayawada Municipal Corporation invites proposals to remediate the site

To end the woes of thousands of people living in the residential colonies around the vast municipal solid waste (MSW) dump yard in Ajith Singh Nagar, the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation is finally gearing up to transform the place into a public park.

The site adjoining the colonies of Ajith Singh Nagar, Santhi Nagar and Vambey Colony has become a hindrance to the local development besides troubling dwellers in various ways since 2007. It also has an abandoned power generation plant that failed to sustain.

The municipal corporation has recently called on national level companies to come up with proposals to remediate the site through the bio-mining process under design, build and operate model.

The Municipal Commissioner in 2016 announced that the dumping yard site would be turned into a park as per the instructions of the CM and with the cooperation of the Central government.

The VMC took up the project as part of the vision of the Central and the State governments for Swachh cities intending to take up modern and scientific methods of solid waste management and disposal. In two years, the VMC wants to excavate all the unprocessed solid waste using advanced equipment and retrieve compostable and recyclable material by segregating, sorting, storing and finally selling it.

The civic body expects at least 90% reclamation of the site from which generation of reusable and recoverable material is possible.

A pre-bid meeting will be held on Wednesday (Aug 16) to receive queries regarding the project.

The VMC will stop receiving the proposals on August 30 and open them on September 1.

 
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