By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, Dec 17: “We are fortunate God has given us such a beautiful city and, it is our responsibility as residents of Shillong to maintain and preserve this gift of God,” said prominent businessman and Managing Director of Jiva Hospitality of India Limited, Jiwat Vaswani.
Team Jiva is known for its contribution towards maintaining the cleanliness of Shillong city – the most prominent being the beautification of Laitumkhrah point.
The hospitality team plans to lift the Christmas spirit amidst tough times through lights, decorations and others.
“We completed decorating the structure located at Laitumkhrah point with lights and other decorative items and tomorrow, we will plant flowers on the side of the road,” Vaswani, fondly called Babloo, told The Shillong Times on Friday.
According to Vaswani, Team Jiva is also reaching out to the State Planning Department, seeking financial support to beautify the entire GS road by planting flowers and erecting poles to support the flower pots, as was done at Khyndai Lad.
A team of 10-12 members, Team Jiva is looking at adopting more roads in the city but, due to financial and manpower constraints, the initiative is staring at a five to six years completion goal.
“We invite individuals, groups, and even other hotels to adopt a road, beautify and maintain them. Imagine if every major hotel in the city does this, it would be a sight to behold,” Vaswani said, adding that they have been receiving a lot of support from the Operation Clean Up group in maintaining cleanliness in and around the city.
To a question on challenges in maintaining cleanliness, Jiva’s Managing Director said, broken flower pots, spit marks on the freshly painted poles and pots break our hearts.
“People should learn to appreciate the little things we do. I feel action should be taken against individuals who have no regard for cleanliness; then only we can lessen, if not prevent, such habits from being repeated,” he added.
When asked about their plans for Christmas, Vaswani said they would be changing the seasonal flowers at Khyndai Lad before Christmas, replacing them with flowers that would last a little longer.
It may be mentioned that Team Jiva has been feeding the homeless people every night for the past five years. They are also planning to come up with a productive initiative for the poor this Christmas.