School rooftops turn mosquito nursery

Staff on cleaning duty find leaves and sundry garbage blocking water outlets

What comes to mind when you think of schools and colleges being shut for month together? A thick layer of dust on benches, chairs, spiderwebs in corners and musty-smelling classrooms. But that’s not all. Roofs of a few school buildings in the city have turned into huge breeding spaces for mosquitoes. Educational institutions across the State are set to reopen on September 1 after a gap of over five months — they were opened briefly in February and shut down from March 24 as signs of the COVID-19 pandemic second wave started being observed. Ahead of the reopening this time round, directions were issued to clean the schools. Government staff who visited schools for the sanitation drive found leaves and sundry garbage blocking water outlets on the building rooftops, leading to rainwater stagnation. Since it has been raining regularly over the past week or so, the rooftops could not dry. The presence of algae indicated that the water had not been cleared for long.