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| Meghalaya chief secretary Ranjan Chatterjee hands over whistles to a student in Shillong on Tuesday. A Telegraph picture |
Shillong, Oct. 21 : Schoolchildren in Meghalaya will act as whistle-blowers to help the people make the state cleaner and greener.
The education department has tied up with all the schools in the state for this unique project. Students will blow on whistles whenever they see anyone polluting the environment.
The state government today launched Sustainable Environment through Whistle Army (SEWA) involving students at an official function here.
Handing over whistles to 18 schools, chief secretary Ranjan Chatterjee said the duty of the whistle-blower would be to prevent people from littering streets or engaging in other means of polluting the environment.
He urged the students to make “good use of the whistles and not to blow them unnecessarily”.
As part of SEWA, the students will form environment clubs in their respective schools. They will be sent to certain localities once a week to ensure cleanliness.
Some schools have already formed environment clubs while others are in the process of forming them.
“The respective environment clubs, assisted by the teachers, will form the guidelines regarding the blowing of whistles,” additional secretary of the education department, F.R. Kharkongor, said.
Pollution of the environment can be in the form littering streets, dumping garbage on roads and rivers, felling trees, spitting and vehicular emission.
This initiative can attract tourists to the state, as many of them evince keen interest in visiting one of the cleanest villages in the state, Mawlynnong, in East Khasi Hills.
Satavisha Chakraborty, a student of St Mary’s School in Shillong, and Suniti Sangma, a teacher of Aerovills School, Tura, welcomed the initiative.