Friday, 03 December 2021 | PNS | Dehradun
The Municipal Corporation of Dehradun (MCD) has started imposing penalties on single-use plastic usage after the chief municipal health officer Dr Kailash Joshi issued orders to take stringent actions against the shopkeepers and vendors violating the rules. He stated in the order that despite the directions from municipal commissioner Abhishek Ruhela to penalise those using single-use plastics and polystyrene, the officials concerned have not taken stringent action on the matter.
As per the order, he has formed three teams with three sanitation inspectors in each team to hold inspections in their respective areas on the days allotted to them and take action against the offenders. Following the orders, the sanitation inspectors have imposed penalties on over 40 shopkeepers and vendors in the past two days. “The corporation imposed penalties on over 20 shopkeepers on Wednesday and 23 shopkeepers on Thursday.
The teams also collected Rs 5,000 fine on each day and seized about 10 kilogrammes single-use plastic,” informed the municipal sanitation inspector, Rajbeer Singh Chauhan. He said that the corporation has been raising awareness among locals for weeks but now the teams have started imposing penalties as per the directions of senior officials. He said that the corporation will levy hefty fines and take legal action if any offender is found to be violating the rules again. On the question of whether the corporation started imposing penalties in view of the arrival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the officials said that the MCD has always planned to start imposing fines on such violations from the first week of December as the teams were already raising awareness for the same for weeks in the city.
