Summary:
Coimbatore: To promote segregation of domestic waste at source, the city corporation would be reaching out to residents through school students. We have planned to create awareness among 75,000 students from 200 schools,” said Latha Sundaram, managing trustee of Aram Foundation Charitable Trust, who is going to implement the programme.Now that the commissioner has inaugurated the programme, we would be training volunteers who in turn would take it to the students, she said, adding that at least 5,000 volunteers would be used in the programme.“Schools would be given 15-day time from the day of launching the programme in their school to exercise it. Every student participating in the competitions will have to bring segregated non-biodegradable wastes to their schools and turn biodegradable wastes into manure at their home,” she said, adding that a report card would be given to the students in which they have get signature from teachers.One class which has collected more non-biodegradable wastes would be awarded per school and trophy to three schools under four categories – corporation schools, government schools, private schools and international schools – would be given, she said.And, the parents will have to take selfie with manure and send it to 8190000400 and a gold coin would be given to two parents, Vijayakarthikeyan said, adding that certificate under gold category would be given to all the parents who had sent selfies and to the others who had participated in the competition, certificates under silver category would be given. To start with, the corporation would be conducting an awareness programme along with a series of competitions to the school students and their parents.Corporation commissioner K Vijayakathikeyan on Wednesday inaugurated the awareness programme, ‘Uram Seyya Virumba’, at Corporation Ramalingam Girls Higher Secondary school at Ram Nagar.The programme is a part of ‘Swacch Bharat’ mission and wosuld be completed before December 31.“We have launched the programme as an initial step to make the public segregate their wastes into biodegradable and non-biodegradable and to convert the biodegradable waste into manure in their house itself, said the commissioner, adding that the non-biodegradable wastes would be taken through corporation vehicles for recycling.Competitions pertaining to source segregation would be conducted to school students and all the corporation school students should participate in the competitions, he said.“During the awareness programme, we would teach the students to segregate the wastes and to make manure at home..