The civic body hit upon the idea after complaints poured in from
several areas about mosquito menace and certain deficiencies in fogging.
A senior corporation official told TOI: “We are planning to put up
contact details of the sanitary inspector in charge, and the time and
day of anti-mosquito fogging in each street. It will help residents contact the designated officer for anti-mosquito fogging.”

Corporation officials feel that publicising contact details of officers
will reduce the complaints about any service deficiency. “It will also
help officials to dispose complaints at the earliest. At present,
complaints will be routed to the complaint cell (1913). It will take
some time for officers to address the issue”.

The corporation
had recently put up the contact details of inspectors in charge of
garbage collection. After the details were printed on garbage bins,
redressal of the grievances was effective.

Residents have
welcomed the idea. “If we have the mobile number of civic body officials
then we can directly take up issues in the ward with them,” said R
Vasantha of Adyar.

Officials said they would soon map streets
to ascertain the situation. “Workers complained that they could not
cover all streets in a ward due to shortage of materials. Once the
mapping is done, we will know the requirements in each ward. We expect a
decline in the density of mosquitoes after the deployment of contract
workers,” an official said.

The civic body will also recruit 3,000 contract workers
to tackle the mosquito menace. The civic body’s fogging operations have
been hit by a severe shortage of workers, particularly after the
expansion of the corporation limits.