A cement concrete road of Dehurihata village under Garhpalasuni panchayat in Dhenkanal district would be left unhygienic and stinking with dirty wastewater spreading and depositing mud on it but for team effort of two dozens of NSS volunteers.
They dug a drain of 10 meter long and a whole near a tube well so that the water flows down to the drain and finally gets stored in the whole without inundating the road running in the middle of the village.
Till now, the villagers were walking on dirty water and mud without caring for their hygiene. But the NSS volunteers convinced them about the benefits of maintaining cleanliness around them under the Swachchh Bharat Mission.
Both the male and female units of Garhpalasuni Degree College in the Maoist-prone and tribal Kankadahad block took a series of programmes under the NSS winter camp in the interior village in the last five days.
“We have been organising a number of programmes to create awareness among the people on several issues. We found that the man road used by hundreds of villagers everyday was not being cleaned and there were dirty water and mud on it. We swept the road and lifted the dirt on it. We also told people how to make their surrounding clean,” said NSS female unit programme officer Annapurna Rout. She added that the students were very much enthused to do social service.
Male unit programme officer Jugal Kishore Sahu said the villagers are told how to live a healthy community life. “We held a one act street play with girl and boy volunteers on anti-liquor issue. It elicited good response from the people as women told about their plight when their husbands and sons returned home drunk. They also asked how they could fight aganst the males when the latter were stronger and more dominant at home.”
But we told the women to gather grit and get organized to fight against the males who are creating nuisances under impact of alcohol narrated Sahu.