Mass cleaning drive held in the Nilgiris

Udhagamandalam: The Nilgiris district administration conducted a one-day mass cleaning drive across the district on Saturday.

All the govt departments, including the police, forest, tourism and rural development, were involved in the exercise.

In Ooty, district collector Lakshmi Bhavya Tanneeru along with volunteers and sanitary workers walked at least 4 km cleaning the stretch from the railway station to Govt Botanical Garden, covering the municipal market, Lower Bazar and Charing Cross. They collected plastic waste mainly.

Lakshmi said, “The mass cleaning drive was held at govt offices, public places, anganwadi centres, schools, colleges and student hostels”. She said, “This is an act to create awareness among the public and the tourists to safeguard their environment and not to use the banned plastic items.”

She appealed to the public and tourists to switch over to ‘manjapai’ concept. She instructed the commercial establishments to keep dustbins at their entrances.

The collector distributed pamphlets related to ‘Plastic-free Tamil Nadu’ on behalf of the Pollution Control Board.

Superintendent of police N S Nisha, additional collector H R Kaushik and district forest officer S Gowtham headed teams in various locations in the mass cleaning drive.