Need for awareness
At the very entrance of Duttabad (from the Salt Lake side) stands a Shiva linga with a plastic bucket below it. When devotees pour water on the linga, it flows into the bucket and stays for weeks, according to locals. The water has turned pungent but residents don’t realise it could be breeding mosquitoes.
“Maybe it breeds mosquitoes, who knows? No one has thought of it this way since it is considered holy water,” said Naresh Mondal, who lives in a one-room house next to this linga. “The water has been collecting for more than a month. We only drain it out when it reaches the brim.”
Walk past the hutments and you see scores of buckets lined outside every one of them. “Duttabad doesn’t have round-the-clock water supply. We have to collect water from the municipal tap and store them in buckets,” said homemaker Shefali Golui. “Health workers have told us not to store water but we have no choice.”
One can only hope that this water gets used up before mosquitoes lay eggs in it.
Out of the six official dengue deaths in the city this season, two have been in Duttabad. The Telegraph Salt Lake visited the slums on the fringes of Salt Lake this week and found residents living in conditions where mosquitoes are but bound to breed.
The ponds have been cleaned in the past but are again as dirty as ever. The six to seven water bodies in Duttabad have plastic bottles floating in them, their banks have beer bottles and plastic bags overflowing. “The corporation had cleaned our ponds and even house owners around the water bodies had cleaned it six months back but they’re filthy again and it’s not our fault,” said a resident who lives next to a pond.
Locals explained that a lot of the trash is flung by outsiders who drive past the slum. “They drink beer in the cars and toss the bottles into our pond,” they said.
Others complain about irregular garbage collection. “The garbage men were giving Duttabad a miss for almost a fortnight a few weeks back. We had no option but to throw garbage on the streets and in the water,” said a resident.
The problem got so severe that residents blocked the road connecting Salt Lake and E.M. Bypass through the heart of the slum for close to an hour a couple of weeks back. MLA Sujit Bose had to come and promise action for the residents to relent and lift the blockade.
“After the two children (10-year-olds Narayan Shrestha and Akash Chowdhury) succumbed to dengue, the authorities had started fogging and bleaching the neighbourhood. But that was only for two days. Once the news died down, they stopped coming,” said resident Tania Pal.
Back against the wall
Nirmal Dutta, who is councillor of a major part of Duttabad, said 25 residents have been diagnosed with dengue in the last 15 days. “I am in desperate need of resources but the civic body is giving my ward step-motherly treatment.”
His area is spread over 12 sq km but he only gets 15 to 20kg of sticks a year to make brooms to sweep the place. “That only makes eight brooms for such a massive area,” he says, adding that he took up the issue at board meetings on July 19 and August 30 but hasn’t received extra brooms yet.
Recently the MLA had distributed 1,000 mosquito nets to Duttabad residents but the councillor says that’s not enough. “Duttabad has 10,000 houses with an average of four or five people living in each. So out of about 50,000 people only 10,000 were given mosquito nets. We need to do more,” Dutta says.
“In the last six months, I have sent six appeals to the board to buy me garbage vans but they have not even floated the tender notice yet. It will cost only Rs 15,000 for 10 vans but nobody has time to think about Duttabad,” he laments.
A bucket accumulating water under a Shiva linga Picture by Mayukh Sengupta
An open drain clogged with plastic. Picture by Mayukh Sengupta
