Mysuru:  Having to be satisfied with the best ‘Cleanest Medium City’ award last year, Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) is making all efforts to see that it regains the top spot this time. In an effort to encourage large-scale citizen participation, MCC, in association with Let’s Do It Mysore! (an NGO) conducted a volunteers meeting at JSS Women’s College auditorium this morning.

Addressing the gathering, MCC Commissioner Gurudatta Hegde said, “The main agenda is to identify 200 volunteers who can work relentlessly full time for the next 10 days to achieve at least two lakh citizen participation in the survey. Mysuru has all the ability to top the spot. It is only in citizen’s participation that we are lagging behind.”

“Volunteers need to create awareness among the general public about the importance of segregation of wet and dry waste at source and avoidance of plastic usage. Looking back the time of our forefathers, there were no plastic bags for keeping things together. This contributed to a clean and green environment. Mysuru city is producing around 400 tonnes of waste including 280 tonnes of wet waste out of which only 35 tonnes of wet waste is being recycled into organic compost. All of us need to limit and recycle plastic and segregate wet and dry waste at source,” he added.

President of Let’s Do It Mysore!, B.S. Prashanth said, “Over 450 volunteers have already registered to create awareness about cleanliness survey from tomorrow for the next 10 days. We are aiming to have around 20,000 volunteers in this endeavour. Each of these volunteer would aim to garner at least 1,000 votes from the citizens. The expenditure and other needs of these volunteers will be taken care of by organisers.”