RAWALPINDI: ONLY last year the authorities had declared the Rawalpindi district `dengue-free`. But the menace is back with a vengeance, and taking its toll.

At least two people have died and more than 2,000 are down with the dengue fever, according to the public health department. Hundreds of thousands of others live in fear as the dengue`s victims grow in numbers every day.

What the frightened people find by way of protection is an `awareness campaign`, waged through advertisements in the newspapers and on television channels, paid by the government.

`Instead, the people`s tax money should have been spent on keeping the city clean, checking the sale of unhygienic food and activating the sanitationstaff,` citizen Aftab Amin said commenting on the publicity campaign.

This situation must have frustrated Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif most, for he had praised the health department on its achievement of making the district `dengue-free`.

A hard taskmaster, he has again been breathing hot on the apathetic district bureaucracy.

Public health may be the direct responsibility of the health department, but the commissioner and district coordination officer are the ones responsible to see that all the departments perform their duties well.

Did they, or their subordinate staff, ever visit the city bazaars, hospitals and slum areas to see what conditions prevail there? And it is not that the top bureaucracy of the district was not warned of thelooming danger of dengue. Dawn has learned that the special branch of Rawalpindi police raised the alarm early in October.A letter from the special branch intimated the commissioner of Rawalpindi division, Khalid Masood Chaudhry, of `confirmed reports` that people of Dhoke Naju and other parts of Pirwadhai lacking municipal water supply had been storing water of tubewells in open containers and that dengue larvae was breeding there.`If effective measures are not taken on time by the relevant authorities, a crisis-like situation will emerge,` the letter warned.

Additionally, all the concerned au-thorities were briefed about the danger with the help of photographs of the dirty places and breeding of dengue larvae.Apparently, the intelligence report and warning was not taken seriously, with unfortunate consequences consequences that people had to suffer.

`I live in Jhanda Chi Chi locality where animal pens have been set up when the law forbids that.

Nobody cares that the waste and effluents the buf-faloes there produce create breeding conditions for dengue mosquitoes,` said Waheed Ahmed, a resident of the area worrying about an outbreak of the dreaded dengue fever.

In fact, several people have taken illin the nearby police lines headquarters where the sanitation conditions are no different and where hundreds of policemen live with their families.

Alarmed by the growing dengue danger, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif took the surprising step of pressing the district police in to an anti-dengue campaign.

Already hard pressed by the Muharram security duties, the police now have to escort the raiding parties the district administration sends to catch people not observing precautionary measures against the dengue mosquito breeding.

They are there to prevent `untoward incidents` and to register police cases against shopkeepers and hotel managers for conditions causing spread of dengue.

More than three dozen people have been put behind bars for failing to takethe so-called `precautionary measures`.

But the public reaction to the campaign is that they are being punished for others` sins.

`Instead of rounding up poor people, the chief minister should have ordered the arrest of the government officials who did not do their job of keeping the city clean,` the critics say.

They have a point that had the district health and sanitation departments been doing their work the crisis would not have arisen.

Once the negligent government officials are taken to task, things will hopefully change for the better, sparing the good chief minister from rushing to the rescue of the people every time things go wrong.

Otherwise, the hard winter on the way will kill the dengue monster anyway.