IT employees come out of cubicles, take up drive against plastic use

 Hyderabad: A group of IT employees have been setting aside their weekend for months to spread awareness on the ill-effects of plastic usage and to inculcate a habit of segregating wet and dry waste. ‘Shubhra Hyderabad Movement’ a weekly campaign that started in the month of February is gaining traction. 

Speaking to The Hans India, Ravadi Kantha Rao, founder of the movement said, “Whenever we conduct any programme, people peep out of windows, only few participate. Our aim is to bring these peeping toms onto the street for a clean India.” He further added, “The government spent Rs 200 crore in distributing 2,000 Swachh autos and Rs 42 crore for distribution of blue and green bins. It has been three years and still the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) is not able to tackle the problem.” 

A few months back, employees of corporate companies such as Infosys, IBM, TCS and Media Mint cleared nine tons of garbage and segregated plastic. It took just 50 volunteers, says Ravadi. The community identifies certain locations and involves citizens from different background to help them with the litter and segregation. They have also, started doing plastic recovery from this year at different companies, railway stations and from students to corporate employee are working for the cleanliness.

GHMC Additional Commissioner, Musharraf Faruqui, said “All autos were launched with partition & Green-Blue bins were given to every household in the City. Unable to get segregated waste auto drivers started mixing both. Start segregation home and drivers will put back partition.”

So far, we have done the clean-up wet and dry at DLF building Gachibowli, Hi-tech city railway station, Ideal Chervu Lake Kukatpally, KPHB followed by Nizampet ground where we recovered 9 tons of plastic litter from the ground alone, he added. 

Shyamlal resident at Hydernagar said, “People are hesitant to pay 50 bugs to auto person because they are not able wake up in the morning, they cannot expect changes without public participation in any campaign. We were only given one bin by the GHMC and they did not even note about it, later they did not turn up to give other bin to us and in most of the houses we have seen people not using the bins for the wastage instead they are using it for their own work, he added. 

By: Vandana Sharma