Social workers, volunteers of NGO's and citizens from Ulhasnagar and adjoining areas joined hands to clean the Waldhuni river near Ulhasnagar railway station. The initiative was also later joined by Ulhasnagar Municipal Corporation officials and said that the river will be clean within a month.
Shashikant Dayma, one of the social activists who joined the clean-up initiative said, "The Waldhuni river is to be cleaned thrice in a year. But for more than six months it was kept unclean near the Ulhasnagar railway station premises. Therefore it was leading with bad odour. The debris of garbage in the river was leading with mosquitoes which led to many other health issues," he added.
Dayma claims that with no action from the authorities over the regular complaint, citizens working on environmental issues from Ulhasnagar, Badlapur, Ambernath and Kalyan came forward on Sunday, January 23 and started the cleanup job.
Another activist claims that the borders near the Waldhuni river had many manufacturing units and shops that throw the waste in the river. Similarly, many chemical factories use night hours to dump chemical waste in the river.
The different citizens who join the cleanup drive include Marshal Nadar from Youth of today, Damini Safkale, Shaukat Rehmani, Ritesh Awhad, Suraj Saroj, Atul Verma from Mother earth cleanup initiative team, different members of the citizen foundation, The Water Foundation, Dr foundation, Samala Seva Pratisthan, Chava Sanghatna, Jan Kranti Sangathan and Waldhuni Biradari.
Jitendra Rathi, a sanitary inspector from UMC along with around eight staff members reached the spot to help the citizens in the cleanup drive.
Vinod Kene, Chief sanitary inspector, Health department, UMC said, "We regularly carry out the cleanup thrice in a year. Even after cleaning, citizens dump waste to make it unclean. However, will we carry out a cleaning soon and clean up within a month. The cleaning is not a day job," added Kene.
