Chennai Corpn's drone team to have transgender pilots

CHENNAI: After the success of using drones in mosquito control during trials, the Greater Chennai Corporation has decided to utilise the drones on a permanent basis and appoint trained transgenders as drone pilots.

A resolution was passed in the Council meeting held in Ripon Building on Tuesday to appoint the pilots. According to the resolution, seven transgender pilots will be appointed through the Tamil Nadu Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Corporation.

The resolution pointed out that trials were conducted on June 26, 2021. Similar trials were conducted between July 1 and July 15, 2021, and another trial was conducted between February 28 and March 14, 2022. "Spraying larvicide over inaccessible parts of waterways is easier when using the drones. Also, a bigger area can be covered and wastage of larvicide can be prevented," the resolution said.

As the costs of deploying drones are higher, the civic body has proposed to procure drones under Singara Chennai 2.0 using CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) fund.

According to a report prepared by the civic body after the completion of the trial, 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 been reduced 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.