2 lakh students turn messengers of garbage segregation in city 23-year-old man from Kopri found dead in Vashi pond

The NMMC has planned on 100% garbage segregation in the city by October 2.

To take the initiative forward, it has roped in school students, or cleanliness soldiers, to involve to convey the message of garbage segregation. The drive involves participation of over 2 lakh students from 460 schools of the city.

A workshop on the initiative was conducted recently by municipal commissioner Tukaram Mundhe.

“The school principal will be the chief trainer and the teachers will be the class head. Every class teacher will choose a girl and a boy as captains of the class cleanliness soldiers. The captains will take stock of the cleanliness projects in the class.”

He added, “There will also be a group of 10 to 15 cleanliness soldiers selected to coordinate activities of the school. Our objective is to create an environment to have projects to treat wet garbage in every school.”

Mundhe said, “Our cleanliness soldiers will check if garbage segregation is being done in their housing society. Whether the garbage truck comes to the society in time and if segregated garbage is given.

A total of 700 metric tonnes of garbage is generated in the city every day and 300 metric tonnes are being segregated daily.

“Every housing society will form a group of such 10 to 12 students who will help implement the lessons on garbage segregation,” said Mundhe.

“To ensure that our city is clean and beautiful the residents of the city need to segregate their garbage into dry and wet and believe that they are doing so for their own good health. They need to realise that apart from personal hygiene, community and social hygiene too us our moral responsibility,” Mundhe added.

A 23-year-old man from Kopri village at Vashi’s Sector 26, was found dead in a village pond on Tuesday.

Some residents, who had gone to the pond for immersion, spotted the body floating in the water around 4.30pm and informed the police. The police fished out the body and sent it to NMMC hospital. The doctors declared him brought dead.

The deceased has been identified as Govind Kishore Madak. “It is not clear how he fell into the water. We suspect he had gone to the pond for some work on Monday night and slipped,” said a police officer from APMC police station.

The police were clueless about the identity of the deceased for a few hours. The deceased’s family learnt about the body from some other people in their neighbourhood. They later went to the hospital and identified the body.

“The body was handed over to his family after post-mortem,” another police officer said. The police have registered an accidental death case.