ONGC begins plastic-free Godavari campaign

Special teams to flush out wastes from the river water

Pumping out trash: DMR Sekhar, ED-Asset Manager, ONGC Rajahmundry Asset, launching the Godavari clean-up programme at the Kotilingalarevu Ghat on Friday.

Commemorating the World Environment Day thematised as Beat Plastic Pollution, ONGC Rajahmundry Asset in collaboration with the Rajamahendravaram Municipal Corporation (RMC) has undertaken cleaning of ghats, with special focus on plastic on the banks of River Godavari here on Friday. The programme was jointly inaugurated by D.M.R. Sekhar, Executive Director-Asset Manager and Satyanarayana, Officiating Municipal Commissioner at Kotilingalarevu.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Sekhar said ONGC had launched a campaign to clean the Godavari ghats - from Kotilingalarevu to the ISKON temple - in coordination with RMC. Besides, it would be drafting a Burrakatha team to create awareness on the ill-effects of plastic on the river eco-system.

He called upon the citizens to make it a habit of not bringing single-use plastic material as a mark of honour to the river.

Lifeline of district

Expressing concern over the plastic pollution of the Godavari, he said, mother Godavari is the lifeline of the district providing livelihood to lakhs of people, serving the drinking water needs and irrigating huge tracts of land. But citizens were not giving back the respect the river deserved and polluting it heavily. “If our disrespect continues, the Godavari will be filled with plastic and fish will be replaced by plastic waste, he said.

ONGC has drafted its specialised Regional Crisis Management Team engineers equipped with high-powered pumps to clean the ghats. The pumps with a capacity of jetting out 2,500 gallons of water per minute were mounted on a barge floating on the waters. The bio-wastes, algae and plastics would be flushed close to the ghat structures. The flushed waste will be loaded manually on the trucks placed 40 metres above the waters. Later, the waste will be dumped at the municipal dumping site.

Around 100 personnel of the SPF and 100 RMC sanitation staff will be involved in the cleaning exercise for the next five days. Around 150 tonnes of waste is expected to be collected.

ONGC employees, Association of Scientific and Technical Officers (ASTO), Petroleum Employees Union (PEU) representatives, All India SC, ST Employees Welfare Association (AISCSTEWA), Women Development Forum (WDF) and ONGC Officers Mahila Samiti (OOMS) office-bearers participated in the event.