Volunteers In Jammu Strive To Save The Tawi River

Heaps of plastic, cloth and other solid waste lay around the sides of the concrete flood barrier at Gujjar Nagar, a locality in the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir in north-west India. Zakir is one of a group of local children and young people who meet up at Gujjar Nagar to clean the riverbank. On November 1, 2020, when The Third Pole attended the clean-up, they had met every Sunday for the previous six weeks, participating in a drive coordinated by Friends of River Tawi (FORT), a movement formed by several environmental groups spearheaded by Climate Front Jammu. “A lot of construction waste is also dumped along the Tawi. Apart from that, there’s cloth, sanitary napkins and plastic waste. The drains from these areas also directly discharge water into the river,” said Ananya, an interior design student and member of the environmental collective.

(Construction waste, plastics, textiles and other solid waste along the Tawi river in Jammu)
The Tawi is a transboundary river and major tributary of the Chenab, which flows from India to Pakistan. It originates at the Kailash Kund glacier in the district of Doda and passes through Jammu. Over the years, its water quality has deteriorated due to the dumping of waste and discharge of the city’s sewerage into it. In addition, climate change has reduced its water flow. Authorities ‘Disinterested’ After a few hours of litter collection, around 20 big sacks of waste accumulated by the river. That only took care of part of the problem. “The Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC) has been very disinterested. We have to repeatedly call them so that they send garbage trucks to pick the collected waste. We carry the waste to the side of the street and they pick it up the next day,” said Salmeen, a volunteer. Shivam Mehra, a local resident, said, “The garbage here comes not only from local residences – the municipal garbage truck also dumps waste here. They haven’t been doing that for a while probably because of the attention this stretch [Gujjar Nagar] is getting now.” A spokesperson for JMC told The Third Pole that waste is collected regularly and that local people are responsible for littering the area around the Tawi.

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