THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A coastal ward has outdone the competitors to win the first prize in the dry day challenge organized by the city corporation as part of its mosquito eradication campaign.
The massive participation of volunteers from Harbour ward, which came first in the challenge, can be attributed to the ward councillor telling his team that if they could get the first prize, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan himself would be giving them the award and they could take a photo with him.
The Rs 25,000 cash prize would be utilized for cleaning activities in the ward.
While Kuravankonam ward, the only city ward among the top three, got the second prize, the third prize went to Poonkulam ward.
The dry day challenge was organized for all the wards as part of the action plan to eradicate mosquito-borne diseases.
Ward-level campaigns were launched to encourage people to destroy the source of mosquitoes and observe dry day on Sunday.
As many as 4,083 houses from Harbour ward took part in the campaign.
Ward councillor Nizamudeen said that they planned a strategy similar to election work.
“We decided to form booth-level teams and managed around 70 teams from various booths In the ward.
In addition to this, we deputed young volunteers for each booth to spread awareness about the importance of this campaign.
I told them jokingly that the chief minister would give the award in person and that it would be a true honour” said Nizamudeen.
He said that initially people were skeptical.
“We first covered shops and households and then we picked hotels.
We could destroy many mosquito-breeding spots.
People soon realized the importance of this campaign and actively supported us.” said Nizamudeen.
Altogether, 62,887 households in the city took part in the campaign and over ll lakh sources of mosquito breeding were destroyed.
Mayor also acknowledged the efforts of residents of Vazhottukonam and Punchakkari ward.
Notably, neither the ward represented by Mayor Arya Rajendran and nor those by heads of various standing committees, including the health standing committee, figured in top three.
The health wing thought of a participatory campaign for mosquito eradication in the wake of the lockdown.
In the previous years, health wing had often met with disinterest from residents when they approached them with awareness pamphlets and forms.
Residents seldom take any steps to eradicate mosquito breeding sources by themselves.
A severe outbreak of Dengue in 2017 had put corporation in bad light.
Following this, the city corporation stepped up activities for dry day campaign.
This year we decided to introduce a challenge hoping that people would show more interest in doing things themselves.
It was a participatory kind of campaign and except in city wards, we received good response.” said a health official.
Thiruvananthapuram: Harbour ward shows the way in mosquito eradication
