The Hindu 04.01.2019
Making a celebration out of cleanliness drive
Special Correspondent
COIMBATORE: If one thought that the ongoing Coimbatore Vizha was just a medley of art and cultural events, what happened at Vadavalli on Sunday sought to change that opinion. Cleaning a 2-km stretch of a main road and a bus stand was turned into a celebration to go with the spirit of the nine-day fete.
The Residents Awareness Association of Coimbatore (RAAC) teamed up with Young Indians, the Vadavalli Town Panchayat and students of Kumaraguru College of Technology to clean a part of the Marudamalai Road from the bridge at Karuparayan Temple to a little beyond the bus stand.
Waste dumped along the road was removed by the participants of the clean environs drive and shops and other commercial establishments were requested to co-operate with the drive launched by the association and the local body to keep the area clean.
RAAC’s honorary secretary R. Raveendran, who took part in the drive, said what was done on Sunday was similar to what the association had been doing over the last few years as part of its Alagana Kovai programme.
Under the programme, RAAC had covered various residential and commercial areas to rid these of garbage, shrubs along roads and to close potholes on these stretches. In each area, residents groups were also roped in to carry out the drive.
On Sunday, however, residents associations were not involved as the drive was carried out by the association and the town panchayat. President of the local body Amirthavalli Shanmughasundaram, former President V.M. Shanmughasundaram and councillors took part in the drive. “We found a lot of waste from hotels and eateries, banana leaves, vegetable and fruit dumped along the road. While removing these, we appealed to the shops not to dump waste on the roads. We asked them to store the waste in bins and hand it over to the town panchayat’s conservancy workers,” Mr. Raveendran said.
Vadavalli was chosen as the venue for the programme as part of the Coimbatore Vizha as a cleanliness programme was already on in the town panchayat, he explained.
Mr. Raveendran said there was nothing different in Sunday’s event from what RAAC was consistently doing in propagating clean environs.
