Over 2 thousand youth set a new record, form a gigantic human chain at Chandigarh during mega launch of ‘Swachh Amrit Mahotsav’

Makes ‘ Open Hand’, ‘ 75’ and 4 type of bins for waste segregation

The Voice of Chandigarh

It was a red letter day for Chandigarh, when over 2000 youth got together to form a human chain at Rose Garden, Sector 16, Chandigarh on the occasion of the mega launch of ‘Swachh Amrit Mahotsav’ scheduled to be carried out from 17th September to 2nd October, 2022.

The activity was undertaken to mobilize communities from across the city to bring about behavioral change, with an aim to make the city Garbage Free. The youths from different schools and colleges of city made ‘Open Hand’, 75 Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’, ‘4 type of dustbins’ (Green, Blue, Black & Red for segregation of waste), ‘Chandigarh Challengers’, the official logo of ‘Swchhata League’ and human chain besides carrying out a rally in northern sectors. The event was powered by Punjab & Sind Bank as main sponsor.

Sarbjit Kaur, Mayor, Chandigarh launched the ‘Swachh Amrit Mahotsav’, 15 days long activity schedule from Swachhata League at the Rose Garden, Sector 16 in the presence of Anindita Mitra, IAS, Commissioner, Dalip Sharma, Senior Deputy Mayor, Anup Gupta, Deputy Mayor, Rohit Kumar team leader, Brand Ambassadors of SBM, other dignitaries and prominent persons of the city.

Speaking on the occasion, the Mayor said that to celebrate eight years of Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban, the Municipal Corporation Chandigarh will organize ‘Swachh Amrit Mahotsav’, a fortnight of activities to galvanize action around swachhata from 17th Sept. Seva Diwas, till 2nd Oct. 2022, Swachhata Diwas. The fortnight will focus on mobilizing citizen action and commitment towards the vision of building ‘Garbage Free City’.

She said that in line with the Prime Minister’s vision of harnessing youth energy for positive action, the first ever ‘Indian Swachhata League’, an inter-city competition took place between the youth. For the maiden edition of ISL, more than 1,850 city teams from across the country have officially registered to compete. The team ‘Chandigarh Challengers’ compete in the League by creating their own unique sanitation initiative to focus on creating garbage free tourist places, she added.

She said that the event went a long way to spread awareness about Swachhata, not just in the city beautiful, but across the entire Nation. This initiative was first of its kind in the history of Chandigarh, which will remain in the memory of people across the city and the country for a longer time. She said that this was the biggest and most effective of all mobilization activities to have ever been conducted in the city, involving youth of Chandigarh.

While sharing objective of the Swachhata League, Anindita Mitra, IAS, Commissioner, MCC said that with the aim of achieving segregation of waste at the source level and a ‘Garbage Free City’, the human chain mobilized communities from across the city in large numbers to join hands and pledge to ensure proper sanitation and hygiene in homes and surroundings and stop the practice of mixing waste at their households for protecting environment and well being of society.

She said that it was part of the ‘Swachh Amrit Mahotsav’ campaigns for behavior change. She said that keeping in view the event as “Zero Waste’ event participants were offered glass bottles of milk and fruits, while staff provided assistance at every step for the smooth functioning of this historic event from transporting the youths from their respective schools by deploying buses to the event venue and back to their respective schools.

She said that besides banner and standees for the promotion of the event and for developing consciousness towards sanitation and health along with ‘Swachh Amrit Mahotsav’, T-Shirts and caps of Blue, Green, Black and Red were distributed to the participants for uniformity towards a common cause and for creating biggest symbolic chain of different type of wastes i.e. Dry waste (Blue), Wet waste (Green), Hazardous waste (Black) and Sanitary waste (Red) with a aim to promote segregation of the four type of waste at source level.

She further said that this initiative has already generated a lot of excitement and interest amongst the youth fraternity. Various other interesting initiatives have been lined up during the fortnight such as the Start-Up Challenge Forum, Toycathon- Making toys from waste, Raddi se Prgati, bhoomi pujan of legacy waste at the landfill site, Mega insurance of all MCC employees, Mega full Health checkup camp for Safaimitras under the theme ‘Mahila Evm Swasthya’ and Technology Exhibition, etc finally culminating with the observation of Swachh Bharat Diwas on 2nd Oct., Gandhi Jayanti.