The Punjab Additional Chief Secretary has told officers of the Higher Education and the School Education Departments to carry out a cleanliness drive in colleges and schools to check for dengue before re-opening them after summer vacations.
Additional Chief Secretary Syed Mubashir Raza chairing a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Dengue on Friday at the Civil Secretariat told these officers to include base spray and fogging in classrooms too and that in the perspective of continuous rains, all government departments should focus their activities in sensitive districts.
The officers also gave presentations on the performance and progress on the dengue control measures. Health Dengue Control Additional Director General Doctor Syed Islam Zafar told the meeting that this year only 11 confirmed dengue cases were reported in the Punjab where out of these six were from outside the province.
He claimed 800 dengue cases were reported in Sindh, saying all the departments and agencies should remain vigilant in the Punjab to tackle the menace spread and demanded regular data and other information on the situation in other provinces. He then told Pakistan Railways to certify their workshops and other premises as a dengue-free area. The Fisheries Department was told to survey all water bodies in the province and apply a biological method to check dengue breeding in these water ponds.
In the meeting, the Punjab Information Technology Board and the Special Branch presented reports on activities tagged on the dash-board by the different government departments. The Special Branch pointed out various sore points in different institutions and cleanliness issues. The Water and Sanitation Authority and the Solid Waste Management were told to rectify the sore points and cleanliness to check the breeding. Those also taking part in the meeting were Members of Punjab Assemblies Lubna Faisal and Peer Ashraf, senior officers of the concerned departments, public health experts, officers of federal government departments in Lahore, the Chief Minister Dengue Research Cell in-charge and representatives of different agencies.