INDORE: Here’s why Indore has been the Swachh champ five times in a row. Thousands of Indoreans picked up brooms and trash bags on Sunday morning and went about cleaning roads, parks and streets in their localities as 7,000 sanitation workers had been given the day off due to a community festival.
From the business hub of Vijay Nagar to the temple area of Khajrana and the suburb of Sukhliya, everyone was connected by the same goal: to keep the city’s Swachh image spotless. MP’s commercial capital is unbeaten in the Swachh Survekshan Awards.
On Sunday, around 7,000 grade-4 civic employees from the Valmiki community took a day’s leave after overnight celebrations of Goga Navami – one of their biggest festivals.
So, Indoreans filled in for them. Sources say 3,000 to 4,000 people from residential societies, plus thousands of members from 15 traders’ and market associations, 10 social welfare organisations, NGOs and at least 50 banking and insurance firms teamed up in their respective areas to pick up the night’s trash. Other civic body staff also gave up their Sunday morning to keep the city Swachh. All 85 wards of the city had citizen sanitation teams on ‘mission sweep’
“Every year, we participate in this mega cleanliness drive and sweep the streets. This also helps us understand the hard work put in by civic workers every day,” Richa Jain, a working professional and Palasia resident, said.
Newly elected corporators ran cleanliness drives in their wards. Minister Tulsiram Silawat was also seen cleaning streets. IMC deployed an additional 100 tipper vehicles. “These were in addition to our 550 door-to-door garbage collection vehicles. Besides, 27 road sweeping machines were deployed to clean up all the main roads,” said IMC’s additional commissioner Sandeep Soni.