Around 60 youths teamed up to take the matter of a cleaner city into their own hands under the campaign, ” Saaf Karachi (Clean Karachi)”. The team meets up at a destination decided beforehand and with cleaning tools purchased from the money collected from the local residents then they embark on a journey of cleanliness which takes up about 5 hours. For this activity, a Suzuki pickup is hired to load the trash.
Acquil commented,“If we are left with any money after hiring the pickup, we place trash bins and plant small trees, to give the area a neat look.”
This social initiative has been taken up Zain Aquil, Suha Abbas, Danish Shah and Shaikh Abdullah who is a student of textile design, enrolled at Greenwich University and a software house employee respectively.
“Initially, we cleaned the litter from just the median strip,” Acquil said. “However, the next day the median strip was again filled with garbage as the area is teemed with eateries,” he also added.
“The next week, we again collected donations and cleaned the area and placed litter bins,” he commented.
He also said that they were told with certainty by Nadeem who is the District Municipal Corporation’s (DMC) officer that the trash will be cleaned on a daily basis.
The team has divided the cleanup of the entire city into 6 divisions. Localities in areas such as Malir, Federal B Area, Gulistan-e-Jauhar, North Karachi and Gulshan-e-Iqbal have already been covered so far.
The government has not voiced its support in any way as yet. Also, they are staying away from any political influence which could undermine their campaign. Abbas added, “We don’t want to divide ourselves, that is why we are not getting involved with any political campaign.”
