Dengue breeding grounds aplenty in deputy speaker’s constituency

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Despite massive publicity blitz of the “Qadam Barhao Dengue Mukao” drive, the ‘best men of the CM’s team’ are yet to clean their areas from dengue breeding places to save people from dengue, Pakistan Today has learnt.
The case study is Umar Road at Abu Bakar Siddique Colony across the Ravi Bank area falling in the constituency of Punjab Assembly (PA) Deputy Speaker Rana Mashood and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Member of the National Assembly (MNA) Marghoob Ahmed. The water supply line providing drinking water to Abu Bakar Siddique Colony was broken since many months causing accumulation of clean water on the road.
Such ponds of water, until present knowledge of entomologists, were considered best breeding places for the mosquito spreading dengue. Notwithstanding by the instructions of clearing water pools from public places, representatives of the locality have not bothered to repair the damaged pipeline. Until now, more than eight cases of dengue have been reported at Umar Road of Abu Bakar Siddique Colony including Yawar, Qamar, Saleema, Murtaza, Muneer, Zakia and Fazal.
But despite emergence of dengue cases in the area, residents claimed, no indoor residual spray or fogging has been done there leaving people at higher risk of getting infected with the deadly virus. They demanded immediate cleanliness of the area and repairing the broken lines of water supply. A resident of the area told Pakistan Today that Mashood had appointed his coordinators for different areas who were not interested in resolving the issues of people.
Malik Zeeshan, coordinator for Abu Bakar Siddique Colony, has reconstructed his own house instead of any development work in the area, he blamed. He insisted that no IRS or fogging was conducted in any house of the area. Residents complained representatives of public were more interested in their publicity and getting photographed. They claimed the area was deprived of proper sewerage system, which has caused filth at many places in the streets.
Marghoob admitted that there was lack of facilities in Abu Bakar Siddique Colony as compared to rest of the localities in his constituency but he said it was a riverside area and level of facilities should not be compared with other areas. He claimed that he had put his maximum efforts to provide basic facilities there however many developmental works were yet to be done. The MNA told there was no disposal station to dispose of the waste material properly so some sanitation issues might have appeared in the locality.
“We have evacuated water from many plots there with help of WASA and larviciding activity was also conducted there”, he claimed. Marghoob insisted that no larva was found in that area. He said the broken water supply lines have nothing to do with dengue. WASA officials expressed ignorance from the issue of the area. Deputy Managing Director Operations Pervez Naveed said the damaging of any pipeline was not in his knowledge.
Showing ignorance even from existance of any water supply project across the River Bank area, he said, if there was some issue with pipeline, it would be resolved. He said there were clear SOPs to resolve any complaint in 24 hours and if it was not done, stern action would be taken against the responsible people. Mashood was not available for comments.