“No Kunu” campaign to transform SL to be cleanest in Asia

By Divya Thotawatte

The Guardians of The City: NO KUNU campaign is to be launched this weekend by the Colombo Municipal Council, with ten corporates pledging support to maintain the ten wards as the “Guardians of the City.”

The NO KUNU movement focuses on creating 1500 community leaders from the corporate world to pledge to be Guardians of The City, and mobilise their resources and work forces to help demonstrate, reiterate, clean up, resource and monitor a program to make Colombo first and then every city, river, beach and forest in Sri Lanka. 

The organisers of the campaign looks for ten Guardians of The City by the end of June 2018. 

The vision of this campaign is to build a system of civic engagement that will help Sri Lanka become the cleanest country in Asia. The campaign aims to focus on one city at a time, moving from city to villages, beaches, farms, houses, shops and companies to teach them how to separate their garbage and to mobilise the company work force to help clean the area assigned.

Employees will be mobilised through the campaign to volunteer one day a month for six months, to create a roster of walks and onboarding wattes, buy bins and train them on recycling, walk house to house, pledge where public bins or collection points are weak and create a dirt heat map.

In addition to employees, the campaign intends to onboard children from schools, and Rotary and SANASA members. 

The Municipal Council plans to onboard media while creating media campaigns, ensuring garbage bins in every home, street watte, beach and forest, lobbying for heavy fines for litterers, and launching an awareness campaign and a street walk. 

In addition to the distribution of collaterals, various public education activities will be organised. Talks and lectures by health officials, inspections and spot checks by government officials, as well as house visits, rallies, exhibitions and watte cleaning exercises by corporate Guardians will be held. 

Competitions for the cleanest offices, cleanest shops, restaurants, markets, factories, Government buildings, schools and public vehicles are to be conducted by media vote. The results of these competitions are to be announced publicly, highlighting both the cleanest and the dirtiest, while film clips and photographs of dirty premises or people caught in the act of littering are to be shown in the mass media.