Sunday clean-up date for Pashan residents

Pune: Sunday morning is clean-up time for Pashan residents, especially those living in the vicinity of Shivalay Society.

For an hour starting 7:15 am, they clean the internal road and surrounding areas leading to Sai Chowk armed with masks, glows and trash bags.

What started as a one-day event by a housing society to mark the 71st Republic Day has now become a weekly affair for the neighbourhood.

It was last month when a message to residents to join a clean-up drive of rivers started doing the rounds on society Whatsapp groups. Rajesh Deshpande, a researcher, saw the message and thought of joining the initiative. “But then I thought about my own neighbourhood. In gated communities, the act of cleaning up takes place inside the compound, but nobody cares about the roads outside. Plastic and other waste lie strewn on roadside and these get washed down the river, polluting waterbodies.”

Deshpande floated the idea of a clean-up in the neighbourhood to mark the Republic Day celebration. Soon others from the Neha Apartments joined in. “On January 26, all of us cleaned the internal road area near our society till Sai Chowk on Sus Road. All of us toiled for an hour. When we saw how clean the area looked, we all felt very happy. Soon, we started thinking of doing this once a month and then decided to do it every Sunday,” he said.

However, there was a dip in enthusiasm the next Sunday and the numbers also came down. “I knew the momentum needed to be maintained for the programme to be a success and hence wrote a circular, urging people from other societies to join the movement. I went from society to society with this circular hoping that more people will turn up,” said Deshpande.

The next Sunday (February 9), three more people from other societies turned up. One of them was 66-year-old Umesh Gupta, a retired government official. “When I received the circular, being the secretary of a society, I circulated it to all members. We keep making noises about poor hygiene in our neighbourhood, but nobody takes any initiative to do anything. When I saw that someone was doing it, I wanted to help. I went on a clean-up drive along with members from other societies. I plan to do it every week,” said Gupta.