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Giving back: Industrialist-turned-philanthropist changing the face of underdeveloped Moonak town
For the last eight years, 80-year-old philanthropist and industrialist Rajinder Kumar Garg has been spending crores of rupees annually to bring basic facilities such as a functional school building, park and door-to-door garbage collection to this town.
Once a non-descript, underdeveloped town on the Punjab-Haryana state border, Moonak is slowing inching towards development, thanks to an industrialist who decided to give back to his native place.
For the last eight years, 80-year-old philanthropist and industrialist Rajinder Kumar Garg has been spending crores of rupees annually to bring basic facilities such as a functional school building, park and door-to-door garbage collection to this town.
Garg, the founder of Steel Strips Ltd, says that a visit to the town a few years ago made him realise how it was in a dire need of a facelift. “Few years ago, I returned to Moonak and saw the crumbling building of the government primary school where I had spent my childhood. That day, I vowed to bring every facility to this town,” says Garg, whose father was a farmer and had also studied in government schools.
Over the last eight years, he has spearheaded the plantation of over 10,000 trees here and developed a number of parks.
He has upgraded and constructed buildings of three government primary schools and two senior secondary schools. Besides, he has adopted 12 students from economically weaker sections and got them enrolled in the best private schools of the area. He has also constructed a hostel for such students to take care of their nutrition, diet and other expenses.
In 2014, he purchased 14 cycle rickshaws and two mini-trucks, and hired 18 employees to collect garbage from every household. “Since 2014, our team has been collecting garbage from every house and dumping it at the dumping ground. In the initial years, we struggled to collect garbage as people were not in the habit of throwing garbage in dustbins. So we installed dustbins in each house. Things have changed now. There is no garbage mound here anymore.”
Manish Jain, a government teacher at a primary school in Moonak, says, “Besides, constructing and upgrading buildings of government schools, he has also provided sweepers to schools for cleaning toilets.”
