Covid-19 takes steam out of plastic ban enforcement drive in Bhubaneswar

BHUBANESWAR: Enforcement activities to ban plastic carry bags and containers have been hit since March when the lockdown was imposed.
The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) data revealed that there was no enforcement of the ban on single-use plastic between March and October as the total fine of Rs 15 lakh has been shown as collected till February this year. The government decided to ban single-use plastic in 2018.
The BMC attributed the lack of enforcement activities to acute shortage of manpower.
“The five enforcement squads had to be diverted to enforcing Covid norms such as conducting regular inspection in markets, shops and penalizing people for not wearing masks and not maintaining social distance. The squads are still working, along with police, to ensure that people adhere to Covid norms,” a BMC official overseeing the enforcement said.
Days before the state went into lockdown in March, the BMC had launched the second leg of the polythene-free city drive at Bapuji Nagar here. The civic body, in collaboration with a bank, had distributed 5,000 cotton bags among residents.
After January 1 when this drive had kicked off, the BMC had decided to repeat it to promote the use of eco-friendly carry bags and send out a message of shunning the use of polythene bags. But before the drive against single-use polythene bags could gather steam, the pandemic broke out.
Until February, the BMC had seized 10 metric tonne of plastic carry bags.
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