Hyderabad: A day after the Ganesh idol immersions concluded in the city, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) removed a staggering 10,000 plus metric tons of waste. The civic authority was removing the idols of lord Ganesh immediately after immersions to avoid water pollution.
The immersion of idols of Lord Ganesha took place in the historic Hussain Sagar as well as other water bodies. In the wake of the immersion of thousands of Ganesh statues on this occasion they were engaged in the immediate removal of waste behind the rubbish.
A total of 83,186 Ganesh statues immersed in baby ponds have been removed from the city. Of that, 60,977 were in smaller pandals. Steps were taken to immediately remove 23,094 statues in ponds. Ganesh Immersion Shobha Yatra 215 action teams and 8116 sanitation workers worked hard to clear the rubbish within a 303 km radius.
In Hussain Sagar alone, a total of 620 idols were immersed and Tank bund lake witnessed 218 immersions.
After immersion in special (baby ponds) immersion pools were emptied completely for mosquito control and Gambusia fish were released and treated for larval control. The staff of the Department of Entomology has made special efforts in this regard in which about 1600 people participated.
6500 police officials were deployed by the Cyberabad police commissionerate some of which also worked on sterilising the route for the procession while some other officials surveilled the lakes using CCTV cameras.
It is important to note that despite the earlier high court order asking citizens to avoid plaster of paris (PoP) idols, many individuals neglected the order. The high court’s judgement was concerned about the water getting polluted due to immersions. However, the supreme court led by chief justice NV Ramana (originally from the Hyderabad high court) stayed the order which allowed for the immersions.
This time around, a total of 215 action teams comprising 8,116 sanitation workers were engaged in three shifts to remove waste from the 303 kilometres of procession route.
