70-kg banned single use plastic seized from 20 shops

The Amritsar Municipal Corporation seized 70 kg of single use plastic from 20 shops and issued challans to the shop owners here on Saturday night.

According to the guidelines of MC Commissioner Gulpreet Singh Aulakh, a team of the MC’s Health Department seized 70 kg of single use plastic from 20 shops of IDH market on Saturday night and issued challans to them.

Under the leadership of MC Health Officer Dr Kiran Kumar, Chief Sanitary Inspector Vijay Gill, Sanitary Inspectors Sanjeev Arora and Anil Dogra and the team of the Health Department visited IDH market. When the team checked the shops, a huge amount of single-use plastic envelopes were recovered from them.

Dr Kumar said the government has banned these single-use envelopes two and a half years ago. Before this, the municipal corporation issued over 900 challans and recovered 1,550 kg of single-use plastic by conducting a campaign against single-use plastic. He said the municipal corporation collected a fine of around Rs 5.5 in lieu of challans.

Today, when the campaign was started again in the IDH market, the team had an argument with shopkeepers. He said when the team recovered single-use plastic envelopes and started issuing challans, a war of words began between the shopkeepers and the MC team.

Some people even said that they were unaware of any restriction on sanctions on sale of single-use plastic envelopes. He said these days people are liberally using social media and they should put in efforts to know more about the law banning the single use plastic.