016. Why doesn't the district collector look after his Trivandrum collectorate?

Why doesn't the district collector look after his Trivandrum collectorate?



News: Special squad to crack down on illegal abattoirs. The Trivandrum corporation has decided to depute special squads in all the health circles
in the wake of district administration resorting to section 144 to crack down the illicit slaughter houses in the city.
TNN | Jun 11, 2012, 12.56PM IST

The district collector of Trivandrum has no time to look after the affairs of his office which is Collectorate of Trivandrum. He is very busy meddling in the affairs of other department offices in his district. The Collectorate receives thousands and thousands of grievance petitions from the people of the district each month and there is no collector there to look into these papers. It is for doing the administration of the Collectorate and redressal of grievances expressed in complaints submitted to his office that he is being paid salary by the revenue administration of Kerala. He will not even reply to or take action on the numerous complaints sent to his office by post or online in his official email address affixed by the Government of Kerala. One of the main subjects of these complaints is the bulldozer and soil and land mafia of Trivandrum district removing soil from poor people’s land and endangering their homes. Persons with a hovel on just two or three cents of land make these complaints, expecting making a complaint to the collector would bring immediate action. Instead, the news is leaked to the mafia who retaliate by bulldozing away the house itself. When complains on this subject exceeded hundreds in numbers, Malayalam newspapers began to publish stories of people who have lost their homes due to the atrocities of this mafia. Even then this district collector took no move to declare emergency and seize these bulldozers and tipper lorries. He certainly has read stories of cars in which raiding IAS and IPS officers travelled being crashed by land mafia in Indian states and these officers killed. There have been numerous such cases caused by the sand mafia reported in Kerala also. So naturally any IAS officer who has a family, wife and children would fear to interfere, IAS or not. But here, when the railway at Trivandrum needed soil for construction of a platform at Kochuveli, they engaged soil contractors who in their turn contacted the city corporation, intimating their willingness to accept a few truck loads of city waste as filler for the platform construction. When trucks began to arrive, the natives of Kochuveli objected to their unloading, fearing heavy pollution as the place is sea reclamation. The collector became furious and declared Emergency situation in Trivandrum for one month upon which the protesting natives were drove away. He said, it is being declared as an anti-measure for dengue which is spreading in the city. It is not the first time that dengue is spreading in Trivandrum. As long as he is not bold enough to remove the thousands of dogs from the city streets, dengue will continue and reappear. Even when dozens of people died in Trivandrum from dengue, no emergency situation was declared. When soil, land and bulldozer mafia came close to loosing a few rupees, he intervened and even declared emergency situation in a capital city, in the name of fighting mosquitoes! Where in India has such a thing happened before?

News: No more garbage trucks to Kochuveli, says mayor. Thiruvananthapuram: Defying the district administration, the city corporation has decided not to send garbage-laden trucks to Kochuveli from Thursday.
TNN | Jun 14, 2012, 10.22AM IST

When contagious diseases break out in Trivandrum city and in the district, there is the health department there who can contain the disease from spreading and treat efficiently those afflicted with the diseases. They have knowledgeable doctors, efficient nurses and paramedical staff and a whole fleet of trained health inspectors. In the past when dengue and chikungunya spread in the district they handled it well, without declaration of any emergency or section 144. Now there was no human death which was due to their timely intervention. Do not anyone with semi-knowledge meddle in their routine work. The district administration found it is their work but they are not trained in this kind of specialized work. Leave it to the doctors. Even after learning that it is dogs with the help of mosquitoes spreading these diseases, the district administration did not do a thing to remove these dogs from the streets and homes which are serving as animal reservoir hosts to these Arboviral infections. They do their duty and leave the rest to the doctors. Viruses responsible for Zoonosis diseases complete their life cycle not in the body of mosquitoes but in the body of ticks which reside in plenty in animal bodies. How can a poorly educated and partially intelligent man lead a district administration if he does not know even these rudimentary facts of science? He is, like Don Quixote, fighting mosquitoes by declaring emergency under section 144 which is unheard of before in the world. How can ticks live on the body of something smaller than them like the mosquitoes? That is why they live on the large body of dogs and, if available, monkeys. It is easy to contain this disease by removing the host animal than killing all the mosquitoes which is impossible. If one does not know, one should learn if he is the first person in the world to beat mosquito community with section 144 because ignorance is pardonable but negligence is punishable. Instead of asking medical professionals about these things, the district administration discovered that the street vendors and slaughter houses of Trivandrum are the sources for the outbreak of these diseases. Also the administration found out that the waste heaps in the city are the responsible. Man, they only breed mosquitoes, the mosquitoes infect ticks with the viruses, the dogs carry these ticks and get infected, and when they are bitten, the mosquitoes get back an adult virus to infect the man with. It is not section 144 that is needed to contain dengue and chikungunya but wise application of pest control act. But those who keep dogs in their homes will never confess to the role of dogs in spreading these diseases because if they do, their house kitchen and bedroom will declare lock out. Which authority from the World Health Organization to the local District Administration does not keep dogs in their houses for the amusement of their wives and daughters?