SIDDIPET: Constituencies of cabinet ministers are always held under greater scrutiny compared to other constituencies, where the MLA belongs to the opposition party. They are held to a standard, and perhaps this is why irrigation minister Harish Rao was flabbergasted when he saw plastic bottles being used in a government hospital in his constituency Siddipet, fresh after his government declared that it would discourage the use of plastic throughout the State.
Siddipet was declared an open defecation free (ODF) district recently. Some areas in the district had banned the use of plastic due to the danger of ground-water contamination, not to mention a whole range of concomitant issues that come with it. Many programmes and drives against plastic in the district have reportedly achieved good results. So when Harish Rao visited the Siddipet Government Hospital, he was shocked to see plastic bottles everywhere.
Immediately, the minister called Most Backward Classes(MBC) Corporation chairman Taduri Srinivas and asked him to send samples of clay bottles to him and the district collector. On Tuesday, the MBC Chairman presented some models of clay bottles to the district collector P Venkatram Reddy. The models were liked so much by the collector that he is reported to have ordered around 5000 bottles for use in hospitals and wants them to be used in all government offices as well.