South civic body drags feet over special pest-control train

NEW DELHI: A special pest control train, a joint project of the Northern Railway and the South Delhi Municipal Corporation, has not run this year.

NEW DELHI: A special pest control train, a joint project of the Northern Railway and the South Delhi Municipal Corporation, has not run this year.

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The train was running for the past five years during monsoon and sprayed mosquito repellents and insecticides along the railway tracks.

Officials said this year the south civic body has not heeded to repeated requests by Northern Railways to jointly conduct fogging along rail tracks to combat the spread of mosquito-borne diseases in the Capital.

It exposes the corporation’s claims that it has taken all preventive measures to control mosquito breeding, when the city has witnessed over 1,000 cases each chikungunya and dengue.

The special train runs along the Ring Railway route-- that connects major rail routes to city localities.

The railways have been requesting the corporation to start the exercise for the past 20 days, said divisional railways manager (DRM), Delhi, Arun Arora. The civic body officials said they were not well equipped to start the service before September 23, he said.

“We have our resources ready. If the corporation asks us to start it now, we can run it even now,” he said. “Seeing the situation worsening in Delhi, my department’s health officials have been in regular touch with the corporation employees. The Northern Railways launched a week-long cleanliness drive Swachh Rail – Swachh Bharat drive on September 17. We contacted the corporations then too as we thought it would be a good idea to launch the train on the day of the drive,” he said.

A senior corporation doctor said the train is effective as it runs on the Ring Railway route, a high-risk zone with heavy a lot of encroachments.

SDMC commissioner, Puneet Goel, however, said it was a usual drill. “We launch our train in the third week of September,” he said.

Leader of the opposition in the south Corporation, Farhad Suri, said, “If it is a crisis situation then we need to take extraordinary decisions… Why is that we wake up only after a crisis? I have been asking senior SDMC officials to launch the train for the past month, but they have woken up now ,” he added.

Railways allow the civic body to use its train and tracks while the corporation provides equipment and materials. The spraying machine can cover areas up to 50 metre radius.