After assumption of the office, Chief Health Officer of the DCC, Colonel Azizul Haque initiated this programme to keep ditches and water bodies of the city free from water hyacinth.

Azizul Haque has employed the DCC's Mosquito Control Technical Committee to carry out and to monitor the job.

"The rainy reason is heralding the beginning of winter. It is the perfect time for mosquitoes to breed and if preventive action is not taken on time the number of mosquitoes would multiply by leaps and bounds," said an official of the Health Department of the DCC.

Apart from the cleaning of water hyacinth, we are also spraying larvicide so that it cannot breed.

The committee began the operation on September 28 from Zone 7. "Initially we have scheduled the programme for 13 days. If necessary, we will extend it."

The first phase of the programme will end on September 10.

City-dwellers, however, have not fortunately faced any Aedes mosquitoes like last year due to favourable weather conditions and the DCC awareness programme about it.

"Although the temperature reached 30 to 33 degrees Celsius, humidity has not crossed 65 per cent mark this year. If the humidity reached 80 per cent along with the temperature mentioned above, the Aedes mosquitoes would have bred immensely," the sources said.