Pune: The social organisation Jaldindi Pratishthan, working on cleaning the river banks in Pimpri-Chinchwad, conducted a cleanliness drive at Pavana river bank at Thergaon Ghat on Sunday. They have set up a mission to clean the 32 river banks of Pimpri-Chinchwad area.

Around 50 NGOs and 90 students participated in the cleanliness drive. These people collected four tonnes of garbage and sent to the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) for further processing. 
Rajeev Bhavsar, Trustee of Pratishthan, said, “The garbage which was collected by us included huge amount of plastic, bottles, clothes and foam. Social organisations in Pimpri-Chinchwad are working to clean the river by removing hyacinth, but we will be working to clean the 32 river banks of Pimpri-Chinchwad.”

The participating NGOs included Bhavsar Vision, Change Makers Today, Rotary Club of Walhekarwadi, Police Nagarik Mitra, Tanpure Foundation Senior Citizens Foundation, Angholichi Goli and several others. The students of Dr DY Patil Institute of Engineering Management and Research and Institute of Technology, Akurdi;  JSPM Rashtriya Sahu College of Engineering, Tathawade, also participated in the cleanliness drive. 

“The PCMC helped us by providing garbage collecting buckets and brooms (kharata) while we bought hand gloves and masks,” Bhavsar added.