Team News Riveting
Hyderabad, September 26
Telangana is making its presence felt at the Swachhata Pakhwada by organizing all kinds of cleanliness and awareness drives galvanizing citizen movement for cleanliness.
For the past nine years, the Swachh Bharat Mission has been able to draw mass public participation to realize the dream of a garbage free India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s clarion call for swachhata was well reciprocated by the common citizens, civic bodies, towns, gram panchayats and private agencies, who have taken the ownership to create a clean India.
Prime Minister appealed to the countrymen urging them to join in the ‘Ek Tareekh, Ek Ghanta, Ek Sath’ mass cleanliness drive to be conducted at all kinds of public places scheduled to take place at 10 am on 1st October 2023. Over 13 crore citizens have already joined Swachhata Pakhwada – Swachhata Hi Seva 2023 and engaged in the fortnight long that started from 15th September till 2ndOctober 2023- the Swachh Bharat Diwas (SBD).
They carried out a mega cleanliness drive where students, young kids, youth, local residents, institutions, civic agencies and others participated in various sanitation activities and made conscious efforts to make their surrounding areas clean. Over 21 lakh citizens participated in the cleanliness drives across the State. The masses joined the shramdaan and awareness activities at public institutions, public places, market places etc.
The people were actively involved in collection of plastic waste in and around villages. At the same time, they spread awareness on swachhata in rural and urban areas. They educated all about waste management, proper disposal of waste, source segregation and the principles of Refuse, Reduce and Reuse of single-use plastic and resort to its alternatives such as steel bartan banks, and bags made of jute, cotton and cloth, thus contributing their bits to not only achieve swachhata but protecting the environment as well. Citizens also took swachhata pledge, joined in swachhata rallies, formed human chains as part of awareness activities on swachhata.
As part of the Swachhata Hi Seva 2023 campaign, Telangana has so far has conducted awareness drives in 1,874 schools and colleges and 2,048 ward-level programmes on sanitation. Till now, a total of 314 GVP points out of 380 have been cleared and a separate collection system in respective GVP areas to sustain cleanliness has also been arranged.
The State has vowed to convert all these 314 GVP points as IEC points. Also, 117 public parks have also been sanitised apart from 1,072 spots around community and public toilets have also been cleaned up with the help of NCC/NSS students and women SHG members. States are leaving no stone unturned to achieve the goal of garbage free cities by 2026 set under SBMU 2.0. The Jan Andolan for swachhata is just going to gain momentum from here.
