Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Operation clean-up gets going

Photo: G. Krishnaswamy

The day after: Cleaning up of Hussainsagar was taken up by the GHMC on Wednesday. -

HYDERABAD: The Buddha Purnima Project Authority (BPPA) will begin salvage operations in the Hussainsagar Lake from Thursday to remove all the remains of the idols immersed in it during the last few days.

BPPA Officer on Special Duty N. Chandramohan Reddy said on Wednesday that the entire stretch where the Ganesh idols were immersed under the body’s jurisdiction would be cleaned in the next two days.

“We will take away whatever material has been dumped into the lake,” he said.

BPPA would press into service four cranes to lift heavy material and deploy 250 manual labour to remove other floating particles.

Twenty-five trucks would also be engaged for the work, he said.

Barely hours after the immersion procession was completed and in the early morning hours, GHMC’s Health and Sanitation Department swung into action to sweep clean all roads near the lake.

The work began at 6 a.m. and in three hours, most of the work was completed leaving no trace of any waste material left behind by the sea of humanity which swamped the area hours ago.

Additional Commissioner (Health & Sanitation) R. Rama Mohan Rao said they began the work early to avoid traffic problems and had successfully managed to take out all the left over material like garlands, flowers, food items and other waste from Basheerbagh, Secretariat, Tank Bund, Assembly, etc.

The same procedure was adopted near the roads abutting other lakes too by the respective municipal circles.

The extent of the work could be gauged by the fact that if more than 24,000 idols were immersed on the last day in the Hussainsagar Lake, 3,200 idols were immersed in the Saroornagar Lake alone. About 150 tonnes of garbage was lifted at the Tank Bund and its environs as about 600 workers were on the job in two shifts from dawn to nightfall.

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