By Madhurima Ghosh –
Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MSG) declared a ban on single use plastic. This ban will be effective from 1st July 2022 across the city. Disposable plastic items or those used only once or for a short duration are termed as single-use plastic items. Also, some other items are listed that will come under this rule. The MCG issued a public order on Saturday, alerting residents, shopkeepers, manufacturers, exporters that manufacturing, importing, stocking, distribution, and sale of single-use plastic will be banned hereafter and a violation of the rule will cause a fine up to Rs.25000.
Vijaypal Yadav, joint commissioner, MCG stated that the notice has been issued in the public domain regarding this and over the next seven weeks continuous awareness programmes and workshops will be conducted to notify residents, shopkeepers, and manufacturers about the July 1 deadline. Yadav also informed about formation of seven teams, each having five officials that would monitor and enforce penalties for single-use plastic violations. To oversee the whole operation conducted by the seven teams, two nodal officers have also been appointed who are executive engineers of MCG.
Kuldeep Singh, brand ambassador for Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) in the MCG, said the civic body has opened seven cloth bag banks and seven steel utensils banks across the city to help eliminate the use of single-use plastic, since the last two years.
“The MCG has so far provided around 400,000 cloth bags across the city. Thousands of residents have availed the use of steel utensils banks, which has helped reduce at least 200,000 single-use plastic items. Once the ban on single-use plastic comes into effect, we will be setting up more such cloth and steel utensils banks to help replace as well as reduce the need for single-use plastic,” said Singh.