Pune’s youth join the cleanliness drive ‘My River, My Valentine’

All over the world, Valentine’s Day is being celebrated today to celebrate the love of all kinds. While maximum people will be celebrating their cheeky romance with their partners, there are also those who are celebrating different aspects of love in our lives. In Pune, students celebrated their love towards the environment in a special way!

Hundreds of students came together to clean the riverside ghats in Pune on Sunday morning under the ‘My River, My Valentine’ cleanliness drive held ahead of Valentine’s Day. The drive was held by the National Service Scheme (NSS) of the state of Maharashtra and nearly 1,000 students from 80 colleges in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad participated in it.

Professor N N Shejwal from the AISSMS College of Engineering who is the NSS coordinator of the programme, said, “As we know that Valentine’s day is a symbol of love and care, we turned it into love for our rivers flowing through Pune city and accordingly planned this cleanliness activity today. We identified 13 riverside ghats starting from Khadakwasla dam to Yerawada including Bhide bridge ghat and Sangamwadi ghat among others. Following all the safety norms, the students carried out the cleanliness drive from 7am to 10am with a small concluding programme held near Bhide bridge ghat at 10.30am.”

The cleanliness drive was held by NSS students, hosted by the AISSMS College of Engineering, and supported by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and Worship Earth (WE) Foundation. Even PMC health workers and officials were present at each of the ghats and two garbage containers were provided by the PMC at each ghat. “This cleanliness activity will now continue for days as we have assigned tasks to students for the cleanliness of their environment and also asked them to follow up at the given ghats. It is necessary to realise the importance of rivers in our lives and to maintain and clean them regularly. We got good support from the PMC officials in the drive and huge amounts of garbage were collected from each ghat,” said professor Shejwal.