Jakarta – The city's dengue fever prevention program is progressing slowly, with East Jakarta residents reportedly preventing dengue fever prevention teams, which monitor mosquito larvae, from entering their homes. Plans to have schools students inform residents of the need to keep a dengue-free neighborhood are also yet to be realized.

"We are facing difficulties monitoring each house because most of the residents do not let us enter their homes even though we've already worn uniforms as identification," Rosita, a member of a community unit team in North Utan Kayu subdistrict, said Friday. She said that sometimes house owners treated the volunteers badly. "We often been suspected (of fraud)."

Nirma, another volunteer added that most of the residents were stubborn. "If we find any mosquito larvae in their houses this week, we're going to find some again next week," she said.

She said that most of the residents had not heard that the subdistrict was a "red zone", meaning it had recorded six cases of dengue fever in the last two weeks. As of April 20 the city's health agency had recorded 13,107 cases of dengue fever and 45 deaths from the disease.

The administration carries out a regular Friday program requiring residents to allocate 30 minutes to clean their homes of the larvae of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the carrier of the dengue virus. But the program does not seem to work, with even Governor Sutiyoso acknowledging that it is just a "ceremony".

He said recently that officers and residents did not carry out the program seriously but the disease could only be eradicated through cooperation among community members at all levels.

Deputy Governor Fauzi Bowo has also said that he would ask schools to give students a 30-minute break every Friday to remind nearby residents to destroy mosquito larvae in and around their homes.

When asked about the deputy governor's plan to involve students in the program, Rosita said that she did not know about it. "I just heard about it from you," she said.

At primary school SD Rukun Istri in Utan Kayu Utara, teachers had spoken to some of their students about the virus, but not to surrounding residents. "We have given information about the dengue fever to the fourth graders only so far," said Ada, one of the teachers.

She added that teachers in the school were trying to educate the students to clean their neighborhood once a week. "Most of the students here have a high awareness already about the importance of cleanliness," she said.

According to Vira, a third grader, the students have to voluntarily clean their school every Tuesday. "Teachers also ask us to clean our seats and our tables every day because mosquitoes often use the space underneath as nests," she said while cleaning up her classroom with her peers.