VIJAYAWADA: It has been close to six months since the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) banned the use of single-use plastic products in the areas under its jurisdiction. However, banned plastic bags are still very popular in the city despite regular inspections by the special enforcement team, comprising officials from revenue, police and commercial tax departments.Though the civic body has warned of cancelling trade licences of the repeat offenders, it has been hesitant to resort to such practices till now and imposes nominal fines on the violators.
As per the information provided by the public health officials, a whopping 30 tonnes of single-use plastics were seized, `25.5 lakh was collected as penalty and 12 shops were seized by special teams constituted by the VMC between January 1 and February 29.“Single-use plastic bags, especially those used for packaging of vegetables and food items, have once again started making its presence known in the city after a small gap,” said taxpayers’ association secretary MV Anjaneyulu.
Elaborating further, he said it has become a routine affair for the civic officials to carry out surprise checks on a few traders supplying banned plastic products and imposing fines on them, but has failed to target the source, the manufacturers. The civic body should focus on constituting a committee with civic association and NGOs as its members to report and penalise erring traders, Anjaneyulu opined.Admitting the fact that single-use plastic menace was still prevalent in the city, VMC chief medical officer for health (CMOH) R Venkata Ramana told TNIE that municipal commissioner V Prasanna Venkatesh has directed the officials not to spare any trader and impose hefty penalties for such violations. On why the authority has failed to cancel trade licences of the repeat offenders, Ramana maintained that the matter would be discussed with the commissioner and a decision in this regard would be taken at the earliest.
20 kg plastic products seized
Special enforcement team led by zonal commissioner-III Venkata Krishnaiah on Saturday carried out surprise checks at shops in Pandit Nehru Bus Station and its surrounding areas and seized 20 kgs of banned plastic products, besides imposing a fine of D31,000
on the violators