Doon’s student activist group, Making a Difference by Being the Difference (MAD) conducted a special post-Diwali awareness drive and cleaned up the Nashvilla Road area on Saturday. About a dozen volunteers participated in this activity, which also received the active support from like-minded groups like Green Force and People’s Welfare Society.
The group had earlier written a letter to the Municipal Corporation of Dehradun notifying it about the proposed cleanup drive and awareness program. It was brought to the corporation’s notice that a garbage container had been carelessly placed right in the middle of Nashvilla Road and not at its elevated site, which is its usual site. When the volunteers assembled at the proposed cleanup site in the morning, they found that the municipal sweepers were already at work and the garbage container had also been relocated to its original position. Hence, the advance notification made the group’s task much easier.
The volunteers divided into four teams and conducted a door to door awareness campaign. The locals were already aware about the group and its wide range of activities and also expressed dismay that even during Diwali festivities, the desired level of sanitation could not be maintained. MAD also asked the locals to enquire from their domestic helps aabout where the household waste is actually dumped. Most people blamed the Nashvilla Road dump also used for dumping restraunts’ waste from Clock Tower and Rajpur Road areas.