The Municipal Corporation of Dehradun (MCD) has started imposing penalties on single-use plastic usage after chief municipal health officer Dr Kailash Joshi issued orders to take stringent actions against shopkeepers and vendors violating rules. He stated in order that despite directions from municipal commissioner Abhishek Ruhela to penalise those using single-use plastics and polystyrene, the officials concerned have not taken stringent action on matter. As per 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 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 municipal sanitation inspector, Rajbeer Singh Chauhan. He said that corporation has been raising awareness among locals for weeks but now teams have started imposing penalties as per directions of senior officials. He said that corporation will levy hefty fines and take legal action if any offender is found to be violating rules again.
On question of whether corporation started imposing penalties in view of arrival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the officials said that MCD has always planned to start imposing fines on such violations from first week of December as teams were already raising awareness for same for weeks in city.