Youth, students come together for Clean and Smart Kohima
Participants during the meeting with the youth and students’ organizations based in and around Kohima town on August 22. (Photo Courtesy: Kohima Smart City)
Kohima, August 23 (MExN): As a follow up of the July 20 consultative meeting under the “100 days Smart City Special Initiative Campaign on Sanitation,” the Kohima Smart City in collaboration with the Green Team Kohima convened a follow up meeting with the youth and students’ organizations based in and around Kohima town on August 22 at the Angami Students’ Union (ASU) Office.
After thorough deliberations, the organizations jointly adopted two points as practical action plan to be practiced:
To dedicate five minutes for showing slides/clips/promos on plastic pollutuon and environmental issues in all of their programmes, to make a conscious effort to avoid all single use plastic products in all the programmes.
Altogether 27 participants from five key organizations attended the meeting.
The Joint CEO of Kohima Smart City welcomed the participants and started the meeting with a round of introduction and review of the last meeting minutes.
She pointed out that the youth and students make up the largest chunk of the population and therefore the participating organizations can make the biggest impact.
The discussion was led by the Green Team Kohima.
The Angami Youth Organization (AYO), Angami Students’ Union (ASU), Kohima Village Students Union (KVSU) and the Kohima Baptist Youth Fellowship (KBYF) shared their concerns and suggestions towards a cleaner and smarter Kohima.
The participants raised the need for mass awareness and sensitization while keeping in mind the need to take baby steps which are practical and will have maximum impact.
Some members while appreciating the initiative of the ASU where car bins were distributed to the taxis in the town suggested that the ASU can take advantage of their association with ANTA and request the ANTA and BUS Union to clean and maintain their respective Bus and Taxi Stands.
The KVSU put forward their concern on the need for more dustbins and machinery for garbage collection stating that the KMC may consider procuring more machineries by raising sanitation tax if necessary.
The issue of waste management was also raised, citing the growing quantity of e-waste which may become unmanageable in a few years if not addressed.
Issue of plastic ban, its implementation and the use of alternatives to plastic was raised vis a vis the fear of a syndicate system which will result in monopoly of the market and its implications.
They also suggested that to encourage environment consciousness, plant saplings can be gifted to guests/special invitees during programmes.
The AYO also stated that modalities need to be set in place before the plastic ban order comes into force so that it can be implemented successfully.
The KBYF agreed that “we need smart citizens to have a smart city.” And thus, the need for citizens to have a sense of belonging was reiterated for which awareness creation was necessary.
