Idea to make Panaji plastic free city.
PANAJI: The Corporation City of Panaji has made a fantastic provision to maintain Panaji Municipal market free from plastic bags. The Municipal Corporation has made it mandatory to all market vendors, whether they are vegetable vendors, flower vendors, fruit vendors or fish vendors, or mutton-chicken stall owners to use only plastic bags with 50 microns and banned completely use of plastic bags made out of used plastics.
The Parrkar government enforced the ban for the plastic bags made out of used plastics as it was discovered that while cleaning the gutters, sewerage and sewage for monsoon that most of pipes/ gutters linked to water bodies choked with the plastic bags.
As a chief minister he then suggested that carry bags made of plastics below 50 microns should be banned from use as it choked all the gutters, leading to the River Mandovi and causes flooding in the city and those who were found using it will be punished by imposing huge sum of Rs 5000 as a fine and if found for the first time and then Rs 10,000 if found violating the municipal norm again and so on and so forth.
But the fish vendors and village vegetable vendors hailing from lower strata of society and conducting business in the market are still in the habit of using banned plastic bags stating that they are losing their valued customers due carry bags and most of the chunk of their earning goes in buying the costly plastic bags recommended by the municipal authorities (above 50 microns) as they are little costly.
While many vendors were caught red handed by the municipality and even imposed huge fines despite that some of them are still using secretly as many of these vendors could not even pay sopo and how they will buy costly plastic bags just to entertain their valued customers by incurring heavy losses as their earning is paltry.
On many occasions even the NGOs were assigned the job of convincing the members of general public not to use plastic bags and switch over either to cloth bags or bags made out of paper or other materials which dissolve easily in the water and do not choke the gutters. .
Today I found a tailor is made to sit inthe make- shift tent specially to draw the attention of the market visitors next to the steps leading to the first floor with cloth bags selling at a dirt cheap price “only Rs 20 per piece) these bags are made up of old clothes who will stitch right in front of you and give you and the person is very polite and humble and do his job with a smile on his face.
At the back -ground it was written “Amchi poti ” Switch from single use plastic bags to bags made up of old clothes and drive the change. Deposit a small amount and get a bag made out of unused old cloth from here and take your deposit back while returning the bag.
