Puri: The Puri district administration is gearing up to organise probably the largest beach cleaning exercise in the world involving about 10,000 volunteers.
The cleaning operation will start from Arakhakuda beach near Chilika to Astaranga covering over 100 km along the coastline of Puri Saturday morning.
School and college students, vendors, photographers, lifeguards, tourist guides, hotel owners and their employees and employees of the civic body, Forest department, panchayati raj institutions fishermen community, police and fire services, SHG members, senior citizens and NGO activists would participate in the two-hour-long beach cleaning operation.
Sources said the cleaning operation would continue for two hours from 6am on the occasion of International Beach Cleaning Day.
Puri district Collector Balwant Singh told media persons here that this will be a special operation than the ongoing Puri beach cleaning drive under ‘Mo Beach’ programme being conducted every day.
The entire 100-km beach of Puri coast has been divided into several zones and sections.
The willing participants would clean their nearby beaches. Drone cameras would observe the progress of the work while all drone camera inputs would be processed in a station near Panth Nivas beach, Singh said.
All five probationary IAS officers recently posted in Puri to oversee ongoing development in the Pilgrim town to make it as a world heritage site and Additional Director of Tourism B K Jena will be supervising the operation.
The ICZM under the ministry of state Forest and Environment, Odisha State Pollution Control Board, Odisha Mining Corporation and state Tourism department had extended financial assistance to implementation of this mega project.
The programme, the Collector said, would spread awareness among the users of beaches to preserve the ecological balance of beaches, upkeep the cleanliness in beaches and of seawater. It would also send a positive message across the globe.