The City Council initiates an emergency and control action plan to eradicate mosquitoes throughout the municipality of Torrevieja

The Councilor for Health and Public Health, Diana Box Alonso, informs that the Local Government Board of the Torrevieja City Council awarded last, October 31, the Emergency contract for the complementary actions to the current disinsection, rat extermination and deworming contract that it maintains the torrevejense consistory.

Diana Box indicates that this reinforcement of the current contract has been carried out through the Emergency procedure, since the control established therein for mosquitoes has been shown to be totally insufficient to maintain low risk levels for citizens, as has been demonstrated each time specific environmental circumstances have occurred.

This contract, explains the mayor of Health and Public Health, which comes to complement the current one, was processed by the previous government team in 2017, being signed on September 23, 2020 for an insufficient amount of 57,526 euros per year. During its execution, its total lack of pest control in the entire municipality of Torrevieja has been revealed. For this reason, the municipal technical services have carried out an evaluation of it in order to assess the possibility of its modification.

The result of this study has concluded that it is necessary and urgent to proceed to increase the services, approximately by 73% of their current amount, until reaching a total figure of 100,000 euros.

Given the circumstance that this extension is not legally possible, the City Council of Torrevieja is currently processing the resolution of the current contract with the agreement of the contractor, and that is why the Local Government Board agreed to award the reinforcement of the same for Emergency until a new one is awarded with all the necessary services to carry out an effective control of pests in the municipal term of our municipality.

The reinforcement of the current services is composed of two parts; an emergency action plan and a control plan. The Emergency Action Plan will be activated whenever accumulated precipitation exceeds 20 l/m2 according to technical criteria. Said limit is established as a criterion from which puddles are produced, which are the ideal place where the biological hatching of mosquitoes occurs. For this reason, each time the environmental circumstances conducive to the explosion of this biological bomb occur, the aforementioned plan will be activated, whose value amounts to €43,404, in order to prevent the progression of the mosquito population as a result of favorable environmental conditions for it.

This new service that has already started has considerable improvements such as:

• A Stream Cannon.
• A Typhoness cannon.
• Two teams of larvicides.
• An exclusive equipment for parks and gardens.

The performances are carried out during the morning and afternoon and will be extended depending on the needs that are had.

On the other hand, Diana Box informs that a monthly pest control plan has been contracted that will allow the mosquito population to be monitored in order to control all outbreaks at the larval level, preventing massive hatching of adult mosquitoes, whose value amounts to €15,573.

This emergency contract will be maintained until the current contract is resolved and a new one is awarded that already incorporates all the mechanisms, means and design necessary to control all pests in the municipality. At this time, the contractor has already agreed to the resolution of the contract, so the economic settlement is pending, and the new contract is being processed through the urgent procedure, in order to be able to reach its award during the next months.

Finally, the mayor of Health and Public Health apologizes to all citizens for the problems that are causing this proliferation of mosquitoes and hopes that in the coming days a considerable improvement will be noted and this plague can be completely eradicated.