A team of four girls who sought to volunteer for the environment on Saturday, were left unnerved by pollution in the water body they had set out to clean.
The girls, aged around 20, are interns under the Swachh Bharat programme the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation is overseeing. They were to join a larger team upstream of the Ibrahimbagh Lake, but instead lost their way and headed downstream towards an outlet, which they could not cross.
Though not deep, the 15-feet-wide stream at outlet, gushing and frothing due to contamination, could have flushed them away had they stepped into the water, GHMC employees who rescued the girls said. A video shot by environment activists who alerted the GHMC staff showed the girls’ plight.
“The froth in the lake is due to effluents and sewage entering it. The girls had volunteered as interns to clean the lake but were instead trapped by the froth which was flying into the air and blinding them,” said Madhulika Chowdary of the non-governmental organisation Dhruvansh, who alerted the GHMC staff.
“The forceful stream could have washed them away. The girls could not head back as they had walked about 5 km from a known route. They were frightened and shaken due to the condition of water, and were rescued with a make-shift chain,” said M. Kiran, sanitation coordinator for the GHMC in the Karwan Assembly constituency.