369 bags of garbage collected, trees planted, waste bins placed
PANAJI
In a campaign to support Goa government’s promotional drive for hinterland tourism, Goa’s most visited Mangueshi temple premises were cleaned today by around 200 volunteers from Alcon Victor Group and Wagle School at Mangueshi. There were 100 volunteers from Alcon Victor Group along with 100 students from Wagle School at Mangueshi.
The team from Alcon Victor Group included members from Novotel Dona Sylvia, Radisson Blu, Cavelossim Radisson Goa Candolim, and Mercure Devaaya, Divar. The drive was carried out under the leadership of Vinay Albuquerque, of the Alcon Victor Group, along with the involvement of Vishal Pathak, Corp GM at Radisson AVG, Dennis D’Costa, GM at Novotel Dona Sylvia, and Rajesh Radhakrishnan, GM, Radisson Goa, Candolim.
Speaking on the initiative, Vinay Albuquerque, of the Alcon Victor Group, stated, “We started this cleanup because we, as a state, are totally into tourism and we need to maintain our places. We are supporting the government’s initiative of hinterland tourism and we wanted to make a start by cleaning up the Mangueshi temple area and the surrounding place, which has lakhs of devotees and tourists coming every year.”
Speaking further, Albuquerque said, “This is our small initiative. We hope to look after this place for the whole year now. We have cleaned the entire parking area and the temple complex, collected all the garbage. The students, headmaster, and faculty of the Wagle High School have given us immense support with 100 students joining our cleaning drive.”
“This is not the first time that such an activity has been undertaken,” stated Rajesh Radhakrishnan, GM, Radisson Goa, adding, “We have done beach cleaning before, but cleaning the temple premises was undertaken for the first time. We plan to continue the activity every two to three months. There are so many temples across Goa. Clean temple premises would attract tourist footfall, too.”
He further shared, “Prior permission was taken from the temple committee, and the committee was also involved in the activity and offered refreshments to 200 participants. The parking area and the road leading to the temple were cleaned. We collected 369 bags of garbage, planted trees like bougainvillea, and placed six large dustbins for the use of the public.”
The cleaning campaign was completed in two hours, and as it was noticed that there were no dustbins in the vicinity, a few dustbins were placed for the locals and tourists to put the garbage.
The temple committee thanked the Alcon Victor Group and Wagle High School for the cleaning campaign.
