GHAZIABAD: Several residents , these days, wake up to the Swachhta song playing on loudspeakers of vans that pick up garbage from their areas in morning. Besides collecting garbage, these vans owned by the municipal corporation also spread awareness about the PM’s flagship programme — Swachh Bharat Mission.TOI accompanied the driver of one such van on Tuesday to understand the impact of the drive. We found out that some residents are positively responding to the drive but others simply don’t bother to follow instructions.Manoj Kumar Vaid (35) has been working with the Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation (GMC) since 2000. He has been driving the civic van in blocks G, H, L, M and N of Sanjay Nagar for the past one year. He wakes up at 5am daily and reaches GMC’s garage at 6am to pick up the van. He enters Sanjay Nagar at 6.30am and the first thing he does is park the vehicle at a corner of M block and starts playing the Swachhta song on loudspeaker.On Tuesday, 10 to 15 residents came out of their houses, after the song started playing, with garbage bags in their hands. Manoj greeted them and cautioned that dry and wet waste should be separately disposed of in the blue and green compartments of the van. Several people listened to his advice but there were some who dumped mixed waste in one of the bins and left. “People do not listen and think it is not my job to tell them how to dispose of garbage. The saving grace is that over the past one year, several residents have started to follow the instructions,” he said.Between 6.30am and 1.30pm, Manoj covered at least 3,600 households. He said, “This is a huge locality and I stop my van for 10-15 minutes at the corner of every lane and move it at a slow pace so that residents can come out and deposit their garbage.”During his journey through the arterial roads, the song – “Swachh Bharat ka irada, irada kar liya maine” – kept playing on a loop, intermittently warning people to not defecate in the open. On being asked how people react to the song or other announcemnts in the early morning hours, Manoj said that he came across different kinds of people — several were appreciative while others jeered at him for disturbing peace.Meenu Sharma, a resident of G Block of Sanjay Nagar, said the song had become a part of her daily life. “Many residents wake up hearing this song. It acts as our alarm clock and has impact on people’s behaviour. I do not mind the song anymore but it was quite irritating in the beginning.”Manoj’s work got over at 1.30pm and he took the van to the garage before heading for his home in Shastri Nagar. He is one of the first drivers who have been assigned this particular civic duty in the district.

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