PENANG: More than 50 parishioners from City Parish spent Sunday morning 10 April, under the hot sun, cleaning up the Esplanade. The Gotong-royong at Esplanade project was one of the parish’s Lenten Campaign activity, organized by the Parish Human Development Committee (PHDC) and youth who joined the Love Squad.

PHDC chairperson, John David, had written to the City Council of their intention to clean up the Esplanade. On the day of the clean-up, the City Council brought along the necessary tools — brooms, rakes, shovels, baskets and garbage bags. The people were divided into groups, and with the tools provided, they went all around the large area to start their civic duty! Mr Arulselven, 51, senior supervisor of Padang Kota was present with a few of his staff from the Bahagian Perkhidmatan Perbandaran, Kesihatan Awam dan Perlesenan.

“We are in charge of the general cleanliness of parks and gardens. We clean up this place once in a while, when there’s a directive. We are happy that today, the Church group is here to do the cleaning-up. We had several NGOs and groups writing to us before for gotongroyong and by far, this is the largest group.” Mr Arulselven said that Bahagian Perkhidmatan Perbandaran, go around different locations to do cleaning- up. Sometimes, they write to NGOs or groups to request gotong-royong from them.

Fr Dominic Santhiyagu, the parish priest of City Parish, was glad to see many people turning up for the gotong royong. “We come together as a community from the Church, as we care for the community in general.” He said, “I hope you don’t stop here. Continue to build community not only in the church but among your family and friends.” — By Lucia Lai