To the Honourable District Commissioner,
Mrs Gangubai Manakar
For effective implementation of your order on the SUP rules (11/01/2024) you are requested to kindly issue the necessary instructions to all concerned to ensure that adequate actions are consistently grasped and enacted.
Indispensable action may be triggered by you to sensitize representatives and officers under your jurisdiction about the prohibitions and restrictions with respect to the banned plastic items.
Deplorably, your order of past 11 January seems to be ignored by you and by the notified officers.
Ignored or dismissed. We really don’t know.
What all of us can see is that, away from paper order, no action has been taken so far.
All types of plastics banned since the last 8 years (or those banned since last 2 years), are freely moving around with their presence being topped, and displayed, through the flex banners of almost all departments, inclusive of Police Dept.
After all these years, we have but to understand that along with the lack of will (only revocable through severe orders) there is a general lack of knowledge.
And is evident that plastic literacy is absent even from high officers using it at public events.
One of the major challenges for achievement of the order is to build knowledge, releasing simple & basic, but accurate, understanding of the current Plastic Rules and their amendments, (through memos and visual depictions).
Knowledgeable technical supervision, through clear instructions issued to the concerned Officers, Representatives (moved by local member of Legislative Assembly), workers, departments (Health, Police, Education, Endowment, Tourism, RDPR, Revenue/Tahshildar, Education, Fisheries, among others) is of paramount importance for public servants to get involved and prioritize their efforts to prevent, control and eliminate SUP, assuming managerial roles by a decentralized qualified guidance and monitoring.
Such knowledgeable technical guidance can be delivered only by KSPCB officers or Environmental Engineers.
An educational session should be secured and all the basic stakeholders should be notified to attend it.
The presence of District Commissioner, Chief Executive Officer, Assistant Commissioner, Tahshildar, Executive Officer, is of the utmost importance for leading as role model.
Only then, extremely clear, comprehensive, strict, specific directions to the liable departments and officers must be given for regular/ seldom field Inspection of sellers/ users/ producers of SUP, for the collection of those materials, and for all the needful provisions for the implementation of the ban.
Proposal on COMPREHENSIVE DIRECTIONS to be issued to liable Officers for enforcement of SUP ban
- District level Identification of major stockists/distributors/sellers to break the SUP supply chain through backtracking – all officials being directed to identify source of SUP items supply
- Issue of Orders by concerned authorities to cancel Commercial Licenses for SUP violation
- Drive planned regular field inspection and market survey of SUP sellers/users/producers
- Conduct Surprise inspections & raids
- Issue Challans of seizure of banned items
- Issue notices to the defaulters for non submission of Challan amount.
- Deploy Police force for the inspections and raids to avoid untoward incidents
- Fill fortnightly reports on the compliance of directions issued for implementation of SUP Ban
- Impose Environmental Compensation on violators
