Making Shillong cleaner: Come rain, sun or storm, no respite for Team Jiva

SHILLONG, April 30: Shillong never had flowers blooming by the roadside. Now there are Petunias blooming profusely at Laitumkhrah Police Point, near the DC’s office and along GS Road. It takes a dedicated team to maintain this level of beautification as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) by Jiva owned by hotelier-cum-restaurateur Jiwat Vaswani.
The dedicated members of Team Jiva, with their green and black T-shirts, have been involved in cleaning the rivers flowing through Shillong city. In this endeavour they have been at different stretches of the River Umkhrah from its upper reaches down to where other tributaries meet. These cleaning drives include many other like-minded groups but Team Jiva leads the way by their exemplary deeds.
While most people would skirt the dirtiest part of the river which people have used as a garbage bin, Team Jiva dives right into the heart of the matter to remove the garbage. They often carry their own pickup van to cart the garbage to the only dumping ground in Shillong – Marten. When the garbage removed runs into several tonnes the Shillong Municipal Board assists in carting it to the designated landfill.
It would be wrong to imagine that these young volunteers led by their boss Jiwat Vaswani are not frustrated by having to clean the same place repeatedly. “What demotivates us is that we go to a particular locality to clean a stretch of the river there but the people of the locality don’t volunteer to clean along with us. They just watch us clean as if we are paid to do the job. What we need is to build partnerships with the local communities so that they also realise that they need to be more responsible with the way they dispose garbage,” said one of the workers of Team Jiva.
The worst part of the Umkhrah River is on its higher reaches bordering Nongmensong where houses are built right on the river and all houses release their kitchen drains and septic tanks directly into the river. So much so the river has almost dried up and become a drain. The Jiva boys, some of whom are from Tripura and other states said they always thought Shillong was a clean city but now they see it differently.
When asked what motivates them to clean up the city day after day and even to scrub with their bare hands the red spit marks on the cemented flower pots they smile and say, “This is part of our duty. Laitumkhrah is maintained by the team from Déjà vu while those of us at City Hut Dhaba, Jiva Veg etc, clean up the Police Bazar area and the roundabout next to the Assembly.”
The roundabout has now become a ‘selfie point’ but no one asks who is behind the maintenance and cleanliness of the place. Team Jiva has literally adopted Shillong and led by example. Sadly no other business house has replicated this example.
As for the people of Shillong, they pass by, admire the flowers, some continue to spit on the flower pots and pass on. “What will it take to awaken the people of the city to responsible action before an environmental catastrophe hits us and we have no more rivers to behold? Everywhere we will only see drains,” question the young volunteers of Team Jiva.