Around 500 volunteers carrying jute trash bags scourged the banks of Dikrong River to participate in the ‘Dikrong River Clean-up’ carried out in Arunachal Pradesh’s Doimukh on Tuesday.
Hosted by the Rajiv Gandhi University Research Scholars’ Forum and Youth Mission for Clean River, the river cleaning drive saw a huge participation from the students from RGU, NERIST, Venkateshwara Open University, locals and volunteers from Saturday Market Group and Doimukh Market Committee.
Briefing about the purpose of the clean-up event RGU teacher John Gangmei said the idea of the event is not to work ‘for’ but ‘together’ with the community so that the cleaning becomes a habit and not a one-day stunt.
“Today we are here at Dikrong, we are not the only one affected. We have the upstream and downstream so the river problem does not end here. The problem exists till it reaches the bay of the Bengal, joining the Brahmaputra in Assam and so on,” he said.
Gangmei said the duty of protecting the river does not only lie on the Government, but on the local dwellers here that the river provides.
Yura Bathey, RGURSF co-convenor mentioned that Government should also think about constructing waste treatment plants to meet the amount of garbage that are produced and collected every day.
The collected garbage about two trucks was handed over to the urban development and housing department.