Lahoris join hands and brooms to Tidy Lahore

LAHORE: Hundreds of people from across the city will take to the streets for the next four weeks in the largest ever campaign, ‘Tidy Lahore’, to clean up the streets and neighbourhoods of the metropolis. The campaign which is part of the Azm-e-Alishan movement was launched to coincide with the Earth Day, the annual day of action that seeks to raise awareness about environmental concerns. Around 30 neighbourhoods have already signed up to the initiative that would see organised cleaning teams moving through the city over the next four weeks. The teams will spend the entire day in one neighbourhood, cleaning the streets and collecting and disposing off waste. The cleaning teams will be lead by representatives of the Azme Alishan movement and joined by local volunteers and neighbourhood committees who had been signed up by the organisers over the past few weeks. With at least 30 neighbourhoods and hundreds of people involved in the effort, the team behind the initiative believes it will be the largest ever campaign of its kind in the city. Sajjad Mir, one of the organisers, said, “Earth Day reminds us that we are all responsible for the world we live in. It’s not something that belongs to governments or big businesses, but to us, the people. We wanted to launch this initiative today to send a clear message to our brothers and sisters across Lahore: that this is a great city of which we are all proud and we should all do something to help make it even better… I always hear people complaining about the state of some of the streets and neighbourhoods in the city. Well, let’s stop complaining and start doing something about it. This may seem like a small thing, but if we all put in a little bit of effort we can make Lahore better.” The clean streets campaign kicks off on Monday, April 26th when the first cleaning team will hit the streets. It will run for a month initially, but the organisers hope that the people of Lahore would help to continue the programme beyond it.Daily Times