GRP takes BMC expertise to root out mosquitoes

Apart from its regular duties of law enforcement, the Government Railway Police has also been trying its hand at identifying mosquito-breeding spots at railway police stations for the past two weeks. The GRP team is working in collaboration with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s health department, to primarily identify mosquito-breeding spots in the GRP property, and then receive training from the BMC on how to identify these spots and get rid of them.

The Railway Police found out last month that the BMC had conducted a drive with the Mumbai police to identify mosquito-breeding spots at police stations and to train and educate policemen to identify such spots within police station compounds.

Following this, Niket Kaushik, commissioner of Railway Police, wrote to the civic body’s health department, asking civic officials to send personnel to identify mosquito-breeding spots in the GRP stations and GRP quarters.

He also asked the civic body to train GRP staff in identifying such spots for future use. The civic body is also training the GRP in the kind of precautions that can be taken to prevent spots conducive to breeding of malaria and dengue-carrying mosquitoes.

Rajan Naringrekar, BMC’s insecticide officer, said, “The Railway Police sent us a letter and attached a list of about 15 spots where the drive can be conducted. We started the drive last week after we received the letter on Monday. Half of the drive has now been completed.”

Vijay Patil, GRP police inspector, said, “We listed about 15 spots, all GRP beats at various railway stations. Apart from this we asked for the drive to be conducted at Dadar, Ghatkopar, Mumbai Central, and the Dharavi quarters. The work at the Dharavi quarters is also partially done.”