Chennai: Residents associations around Mylapore have now taken up wall-painting initiative as an effective tool to not only make their neighbourhood colourful but also to retrieve it back from being abused.
Last week, people living in Abhiramapuram Third Cross Street, which joins the Third Street and the Fourth Street, came together to beautify the street by painting a wall in the stretch. The initiative was organised by the Central Abhiramapuram Residents Welfare Association (CARWA), which joined hands with ‘Karam Korpom,’ an NGO involved in the wall-painting drive.
Speaking to News Today about the initiative, R Kannan from CARWA says, “This is a very narrow stretch and it was plagued with civic issues as people were dumping waste on the roadside and vehicles were parked throughout the stretch that gave room to liquor drinking and open defecation. It was a nuisance for us and to stop these activities, two months ago we sought the help of traffic police from E4 Abhiramapuram Police station and with their co-operation the vehicles were cleared.”
Then CARWA decided to join hands with Karam Korpom to paint the walls on both the sides of the street to stop people from dumping the waste. “Karam Korpom had already done the wall-painting drive in other localities using student volunteers and we approached them. Last Sunday nearly 40 people, comprising both the volunteers of the NGO and residents of the locality participated in the drive,” he adds.
Slogans and messages to keep the neighbourhood clean and green are now displayed on the wall and Kannan says it has created a positive impact as people have now stopped dumping waste in the stretch.
“I must thank Viswanathan from MRWA, who gave us the support and encouraged us to do this activity. We must also thank Uma and Shivashankar from Karam Korpom and their volunteers. The street now looks clean but the biggest challenge is to maintain it in the same way,” he adds.
CARWA was formed only last year with an aim to make Abhiramapuram cleaner and greener and the association now plans to do many more activities to realise the goal. Kannan, however, feels that for any activity to be successful, the community must involve in it whole-heartedly,
“Involvement of the community is very important and people have to cooperate and understand that it is their responsibility to keep their neighbourhood neat, clean and green,” he says.