SHILLONG, Jan 21: Team Operation Clean-Up (OCU) has been doing their fortnightly river cleaning drive since August 2019. This year, they will be entering their 5th year. They have stuck to the river Umkaliar because they want to make it a model that can be replicated. But after every fortnight, when they return to the river, they find no improvement. There are many groups and individuals that make up Operation Clean-Up. They include Jiva Care, Shubham, Col Sishupal Security Company (CSSC), Kiddies Corner School, Martin Luther Christian University among others.
On Saturday, for the first time ever, the Chief Executive Member of Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council, Pyniaid Sing Syiem arrived at the Umkaliar river to encourage the river cleaning team. Before him, the only other person of eminence to actually do a river cleaning drive with OCU was former Governor, Tathagata Roy who donned his gum boots and actually carried the garbage to the municipal trucks.
An audit of the garbage collected on Saturday revealed the problem that is ailing all the rivers of Meghalaya today. On Saturday, OCU pulled out the carcass of a dog from the Umkaliar river. Besides that, they also had to pull out Huggies with faecal matter in them. There was a school bag loaded with both text and exercise books belonging to one Prashant Rai of St. George School, Nongmynsong. Patricia Mukhim, the team leader of Operation Clean-up, said, “Here we have a classic case of being able to afford first world amenities but with a third-world mentality of dumping even faecal matter into a river.”
The biggest share of the garbage included clothes, cement bags and mounds of plastics which virtually choke the river. Each time the team cleans up the river and leaves it sparkling clean, the garbage flows in from other ‘shnongs’ such as Nongrah, Lapalang, Rynjah, Umpling and Nongmynsong. Umkaliar river is located in Nongmynsong but in recent times there are claims that a new dorbar shnong called Urkaliar Dorbar has been formed of which the District Council is unaware. This has been the trend in some parts of Shillong.
For instance, in Fourth Furlong, a self-styled Rangbah Shnong (headman) has been giving no objection certificate (NOC) to multiple shops along the Umkhrah river. On asking the Syiem of Mylliem, if this man has been given a ‘Sanad’ (mandate to operate), it is learnt that he never sought for such mandate. The same is the case with the Urkaliar Dorbar.
“If there is a Dorbar Shnong how is it that the place is a haunt of junkies who begin their drinking spree since morning in the area around the river and the Dorbar Shnong does not care to conserve the area and free it from these junkies?” is a question that the OCU asks. Also what is the responsibility of the Dorbar Shnong if they cannot even prevent the residents from dumping garbage into the river.
At meetings organised by the government from time to time, the OCU has been pleading to create wire meshes across the Umkaliar river at the boundary between one Shnong and another so that every Shnong learns to clean up its mess or face flooding.
At one part of the Umkaliar river, there is regular car washing right in the middle of the river even while a women resident there collects money from each vehicle. How is this free-for-all lawlessness allowed by the so-called Dorbar Shnong of Urkaliar, if there is indeed one? These are questions that members of the OCU are asking but are getting no answers to.
Now that the KHADC CEM has seen the situation on the ground, he would be better able to impose whatever sanctions are allowed under the KHADC Solid Waste Management Act and also apply the needed penalties.
Left to the government and its agencies such as the State Pollution Control Board, the rivers in Meghalaya would soon turn into regular drains, averred the members of the OCU who seem apparently afflicted by desperation at seeing the state of the river.