Manipur to host River Bank Music festival

Our Correspondent
Imphal, April 27(EMN): A group of energetic youths in Imphal who works in diverse field took up a bold step by staging a small but consequential campaign by organising various initiatives to save the dying rivers in Manipur.
These young minds under the banner of Leipungwa Entertainment (LE), an event management group, and Nongmaishang, an environment promotion group, is also organising 4th edition of River Bank Music Festival on the bank of Imphal River which runs through the hearts of the Imphal city (at Bhagyabati Leikai) for two consecutive days on April 29 and 30 to bring awareness to save the river bank from the further disposal of solid waste etc.
“The idea is to give awareness on solid waste management through music and events as we, the younger generation have to bring a change by stop polluting our rivers which are our lifelines,”says LE’s Director Tom Meinsam. “We take up the initiative collectively since the last four years as we’ve personally faced untold miseries when out rivers were dried sometime ago.”Stating that a state seminar on solid waste management will also held next month, he added we believed that time has come to create a space for solid waste management in our small Leikais(colonies or villages) first before reaching out to masses otherwise there are chances of inviting health hazards and other unwanted disasters because of the unplanned disposal of waste particularly the plastics in our state.
Sushil Khomdram and Abhinash Thokchom of Nongmaishang and LE also shared a similar sentiment.
On April 16 a cycle rally was also organised for the fourth consecutive years as part their campaign for plastic free environment.
Imphal town which generates more than 120 metric tonnes of solid waste on a daily basis and is projected to rise about 170 tonnes by 2030 is facing an uphill task to solve the issue of unavailability of landfill or dumping sites of the solid waste as only about 50 percent of the waste is collected while rest of it remains uncollected and dumped in the open places creating nuisance and unhygienic conditions.
Currently Imphal Municipal Council has been engaging couple of NGOs in and around the 27 wards of IMC for the collection and disposal of the solid waste management.