Bhubaneswar: As the City tries to push hard its cleanliness drive, the authorities have sought community support to prevent uses of single-use plastic within the BMC jurisdiction.
For this campaign, Kochilei Hata near Rasulgargh square has been selected to lead with example by spreading awareness among the vendors, who are the principal stakeholders, and the people frequenting the market.
A meeting in this regard was organised Saturday under the chairmanship of Mayor Sulochana Das on the hata premises. “We urge citizens to stop using single-use plastic items to increase liveability status of the City. It is high time to change our mindset to get relief from banned items like plastic carry bags, earbuds, plastic flags, thermocol for decorations, plastic spoons, forks, straws, knives, invitation cards, cigarette packets and banners, candy/ ice cream sticks, plastic plates, cups, glasses, packaging and films around sweet box,” said the Mayor.
Behaviour change is a two-way process, only the authorities can’t bring changes through awareness and enforcement. It is up to the community to visualise and work for change, she exhorted.
A period of 15 days has been marked to create public awareness and sensitise the vendors. “Initially it may affect vendor customer relations but later it will set example in achieving the objective. The members of market will be invited to create awareness in other parts of the City. In turn, the market will act as a change agent for the cause,” told additional commissioner Suvendu Kumar Sahoo.
Taking part in the meeting the market association president Rajkumar Routray and secretary Pradip Jena assured team BMC to make the area free of single-use plastic and motivate others in this regard.
Fifty members of the association present in the meeting welcomed the campaign. To mark the occasion, cotton bags carrying the message of preventing single-use plastic items were distributed to vendors and customers by the BMC.
PNN
