Silves Camera already is drawing up plans to attack insects and prevent new pests from ruining many holidays as happened this summer in Armação de Pêra as an squadrons of mosquitoes attacked tourists and locals alike in an indiscriminate raids across from their marshy breeding grounds.
The Algarve municipality does not want a recurrence and the new mayor of Silves, Rosa Palma, is already taking steps to ensure that the technicians from the Regional Health Administration and from the Portuguese Environment Agency are in tune and on time with help and opinions as to what went wrong this summer and how to stop it happening again.
The mosquitoes should not be the only pest becoming nervous as Silves already is buying an arsenal of chemical weapons to fight and destroy insects, cockroaches and rats with plans to start as soon as May 2014. A specialist company may be hired to do the job properly this time.
There has been some progress in the construction of sewage pumping stations in Alcantarilha and Pêra which will prevent water being discharged into the Alcantarilha stream where the mosquitoes breed. This is what happened this summer with water lying on sodden ground where the insects bred with abandon.
The real reason for the plague this summer was that the council had failed to buy in the necessary chemicals to spray the known breeding grounds, so had failed halt the problem at source. The comical response by the then acting mayor of authorising waves of chemical spraying, too late, at the breeding grounds and hiring a helicopter to hovver over the area to 'disturb the larvae' was all entirely avoidable had preventive measures been taken as usual.
This breeding area for the vicious insects of course is near to the controversial Praia Grande development area. Developer Finalgarve has said that it will rid the area of mosquitoes as part of its plan when building hotels, a golf course and apartments. The former regime at Silves council was in favour of this major development and strangely the chemicals were not ordered in time effectively to spray and kill the larvae.
