‘Swachha Ejipura Movement’ gains momentum with an objective to create and spread environment awareness among school students and residents of Ejipura as initiated by Ejipura New Extension Residents’ Association (ENERA).
On Wednesday, beginning with Everest High School in Ejipura, the movement commenced with a good response. Everest High School management has expressed their keen interest to have such a kind of awareness programme especially for Ejipura high schools students.While speaking to City Kemp, Ravindra Kumar, President of ENERA said that ENERA as a responsible RWA decided to organize environment awareness programme among high school students as well as residents, so as to create and spread awareness among the future young leaders and civic minded citizens.
Students are deemed better ambassadors in our society to spread the awareness of protecting the environment. Several civic issues aggregated in our day-to-day life disturbs a lot in our peaceful living. These little stars will certainly look at us for the solution to tackle this noble cause, and how to protect our environment for the benefit of entire community. Somebody has to tie the knot.”
Noted environmentalist and animal activist from Koramangala, Nevina Kamath delivered a lecture to the students and encouraged students of Everest High School to take up this issue seriously.”We Bangalureans facing the mounting problems of waste segregation, waste disposal problems at landfill areas and pollute the entire environment. This issue is an eye-opener of civic minded citizens and our local body authorities. Our own national capital New Delhi is not spared from this important civic issue. We have neglected the environment issue at every stage. I witnessed filth and waste scattered all over public places, not only in New Delhi but also in many other cities. Though this is an important civic issue, we have not applied our mind to redress the problem. Now time has come to get into the issue i.e., protection of our environment”.
“Segregation of waste at collection point will certainly reduce the major problems of civic agency so as to recycle them scientifically. While Japanese are segregating nearly forty varieties of their daily wastes at their doorsteps, why can’t we? She insisted students to spread this awareness among parents, friends and neighbourhood. Avoid using plastic bags. Even though below 40 micron plastic bags banned in our state, there is poor response from our citizens. Plastic bags are widely used as an alternate for packages. Make a habit to carry your own cloth bags or paper bags for your daily needs. Plastic bags are main polluters of our environment,” Naveena added.
She also created awareness among children that domestic animals are best friends of men. Time immemorial, about two thousand years onwards our forefathers adopted dogs as their best friends and groomed them as domestic animals. Nowadays we are not feeding the street dogs, but allowing them to survive through garbage wastes.
This in turn, creates civic problems. They will become ferocious; scatter our garbage wastes all over the area when dumped at street corners. Please take care of street dogs and use them as protectors, she appealed.
Ravindra Kumar, shared his view with students that UGD blockages are main concern of our city especially Ejipura.
The major cause being solid wastes are let into UGD lines, which in turn block the free flow of sewage. We also nominated about a dozen of Suchi Mithra volunteers and BBMP authorities duly issued them Suchi Mithra Identity cards to all them so as to tackle environment issues, and with a view to serve at their respective areas. We will provide their list to your school and students can interact with them directly so as to coordinate swachha andolana, he said.
EC member Prathap Singh and Secretary P N Gopal, shared their own experiences with the students. During interaction session, student Surya Prakash questioned, if plastic is so dangerous for the environment, how Government is silent spectators on this issue?
In repy, plastic ban is there in our system. But, problem with enforcement through concerned agencies. We being citizens can only create awareness. Once people understand the problems, situation will surely improve, said Naveena Kamath.
For High School teacher Srinivas Murthy query that, While our Prime Minister Modi introduced Swachh Bharat movement, school children were widely used for the cleanliness drive, specifically at open drains and garbage dumping yards, which in turn leads to infection of contagious disease. Those children being innocents, who will be responsible for their health?
Both Nevina Kamath and Ravindra Kamath strongly show their opposition for drawing school students for such kind of drives. They can only spread the awareness and should not be used for such kind of activities, they contended.
ENERA Joint Secretary John Felix, Treasurer Krishna Kumar, Secretary Gopal, Prathap Singh, Everest School teachers, Rajani, Srinivas Murthy, Vinod, Mohan, Pushpa and Kathreena were present. On behalf of school management, Teacher Rajini delivered vote of thanks.
ENERA initiative: Swachha Ejipura Movement
