When it rains: City’s largest park turning into mosquito breeding site

TMA officials say removal of water from low lying area is the first priority.

SARGODHA:

More than three days after the city received its first monsoon showers, Company Bagh, the city’s largest recreational facility looks like a pond, increasing a risk of dengue mosquito breeding. 

The park is home to Ghalib Library, a hockey and a football ground and a wrestling arena, visited by hundreds of people every day. Visitors have complained that the water has made the access to the sports grounds, the library and in to the lawns impossible.

Visitors talking to The Express Tribune, complained against the authorities’ negligence in removing water from the park.

“Company Bagh is the only leisure park in the city. Now we cannot bring our children here as it is full of water,” a visitor to the library said. He said the park had started to stink. Chief sanitary inspector at the tehsil municipal administration, Sheikh Muhammad Jahangir, told The Tribune that the water will soon be drained from the park grounds. He said the TMA’s priority was to remove water from low lying areas first.

“This will be done in a day or two, which will then be followed by removal of water from the city parks and other areas,” he said.

However, a TMA officer, who did not want to be mentioned by name, said the TMO workers had been assigned to first clean the areas the chief minister was to visit on July 10. He said Company Bagh had originally been picked for the chief minister’s camp office. However, the camp was eventually set up at Sargodha Stadium when it was realised that removal of water will take a few days.

He also said that the removal of water from the low lying area will take at least a week.

Syed Jarrar Abbas, the tehsil municipal officer, told The Tribune that the park will be fumigated once the water was removed. To a question about dengue mosquito breeding in the water, he said, “When the park is fumigated any mosquitoes there will die automatically.”

He said the drainage system in the city was not well-organised, so that rains always caused problems. He said the TMA was in a process to drain water from city roads and parks.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 12^th, 2012.