The Calcutta Municipal Corporation has increased the charges for cleaning private vacant plots that turn into mosquito breeding sites because they have not been cleaned for weeks.
Containers thrown in such plots turn into sites of mosquito breeding when water accumulates in them and remains so for days.
The civic body is forced to clean the plots when neighbours start complaining
that the land could be a potential source of mosquito breeding or when its vector control teams come across such plots.
The spike in cleaning charges is being seen as a penalty on the owners of the
plots who allow the land to turn into a mosquito breeding site, senior officials of the CMC said.
“Earlier, the CMC used to charge 25 per cent supervision charges, in addition to the cleaning fees. The supervision charge has been increased to 100 per cent,” said an official. “Suppose the cleaning fee is Rs 1,000. Earlier, Rs 250 was charged as supervision fee. Now, Rs 1,000 will be charged as supervision fee,” said the official.
The supervision fee is charged because a lot of work is involved in the lead-up to the actual cleaning. Besides, engineers and officials of CMC have to remain present at the place on the day of cleaning.
The actual cleaning fee depends on how much waste is cleared from the vacant plot and other factors, like how many lorries are required to remove the waste.
In a meeting held with state officials last week, Bengal’s chief secretary had asked municipal bodies to initiate legal action against owners of premises mosquitoes are found breeding.
A CMC official said the civic body has issued notices to owners of 8,900 premises since January and lodged cases against 135 of them.
The notices are issued when mosquito larvae are found in any place and ask the owner to clear it.
A case is lodged at the metropolitan magistrate’s court if the owner does not
clean the premises. An owner found guilty in the court may have to pay up to Rs 1 lakh as penalty.