GCC drops ‘costly’ drone spraying of larvicide

According to a Chennai Corporation source, the proposal has been dropped owing to the expenses involved. “The plan was to deploy the drones under Singara Chennai 2.0. However, the administration has dropped the idea,” the source added.

Meanwhile, mosquito menace has increased across the city causing a nuisance to the residents.

Vishnupriya, a resident from Kodambakkam riled that she is struggling to keep her newborn son from mosquitoes every night. “I have to sit sleepless to guard him against mosquitoes. This is stressful. The civic authority should take steps to control mosquito menace,” she urged.

She alleged that fogging operations are not conducted in her locality periodically.

The civic body conducted a trial run of drones in several parts of the city to kill mosquito larvae by spraying larvicide over waterways.

According to a report prepared by the civic body after the completion of the trail, the selected waterways had an overall pre-spray larval density of 5,259 and the same came down to 641 after the drones were used to spray larvicide, which is an 89 per cent reduction.

As per the report, the requirement of MLO (Mosquito Larvicide Oil) has come down while using drones. While using the conventional manual spray, the civic body used 4,520 litres of MLO for 113.04 km of waterways and the same was reduced to 4,351 litres while using the drones, which is 6 per cent lesser. The trial was conducted with the help of the Avionics Department of Anna University recently. It was conducted in three phases.

When asked, a senior official said measures will be taken to control mosquito breeding. “Fogging operations will be intensified,” he assured. It may be recalled that entomologists from the vector control wing of the civic body have been drafted to COVID-19 related works.