hold -- vt -- Students gather to clean Goa beaches

"Instead of clean waves, there are waves of garbage on Goa's beaches," the Goa municipal commissioner said here Tuesday at the launch of a corporate-funded cleaning programme that has roped in 10,000 school children.

Commissioner Sanjit Rodrigues said the 'Waste Wise' programme is aimed to create awareness among the school children as well as make them ambassadors for segregated garbage.

As part of the programme, the Municipal Corporation of the City of Panaji and students from over 15 schools located in and around the capital as well as corporate sponsors like Hindustan, Coca Cola, will come together to take the concept of having four-way bin segregation system in domestic households.

According to the organisers of the operation, students have been given incentives to bring waste to garbage collection centres with the help of a passbook, which will record their efforts.

"This passbook is mainly a collection book for Waste Wise stamps that students can earn by bringing more waste to the collection centre. Later, students can exchange/redeem those stamps with attractive gifts like school bags, caps, pens, even footballs and cycles," the commissioner said.

Rodrigues underlined that garbage is a threat to tourism as well as the beauty of India's popular beach destination. The state receives nearly three million tourists annually.