Rusty, empty, barrels grace the premises of the ‘Mosquito Control Office’ of the Dhaka City Corporation once established to weed out mosquitoes.
Although the office was once active in its endeavour to end the mosquito menace, nowadays it mostly serves as storage for the empty mosquito medicine drums of the two city corporations.
The 200-litre capacity empty barrels, most of which are the property of Dhaka South City Corporation, house parasites and stagnant rainwater — the ideal breeding ground for Aedes mosquitoes — carrier of the dengue virus.
The office is mainly run by the third or fourth-grade employees with a deputy secretary of the Local Government Division as its chief.
The office was established in 1948, under the health ministry as part of a programme to control a Malaria outbreak.
It was then taken under the local government after 1980 and from 1990 onwards went under the then undivided Dhaka city corporation.
According to the employees, the manpower of the office divided into the 10 zones of the city corporation when it was divided into North and South.
They said that the office lost its relevance since then and the staff spends its days counting paychecks and pensions.
The employees added that despite the 281 people manpower, only 13 work at the office while the rest carry out fieldwork for the city corporations.
“There was a time when our job was to eliminate mosquitoes,” said an office employee wishing to remain anonymous.
“All we do now is store medicines and distribute them in the 10 regions under the city corporations,” he added.
Bangla Tribune could not reach the office chief Deputy Secretary ANM Faizul Hoque as he is currently abroad.
Mosquito Control Office Government Employee Association Secretary Gias Uddin said that no one knows how the organisation came to the current state of inactivity.
“The organisation used to work with all sorts of mosquito elimination drives including Malaria,” he said.
He added that they no longer have the jurisdiction to carry out the job of controlling mosquitoes which they once used to do.