Odisha Chief Secretary Suresh Chandra Mohapatra has ordered the State government officials to take measures for strict enforcement of the ban on single-use plastic (SUP).
Presiding over the state-level Task Force Committee meeting, the Chief Secretary ordered District Collectors, Divisional Forest Officers (DFOs) and field officers of the concerned departments to strengthen the law and take necessary actions after reviewing the steps taken in this regard.
Mohapatra has also directed the district collectors and DFOs to submit monthly report on single use plastic after carrying out regular enforcement at public places, especially at tourist spots.
Besides, the Chief Secretary stressed on the reuse of plastic waste in road construction and cement making.
Apart from creating awareness among common people to ban plastic, Mohapatra asked the officers to take up extensive awareness programmes to encourage the public to carry their own bag to markets.
It may be mentioned here that the Odisha government had banned single-use plastic in all urban areas of the State from October 2 (Gandhi Jayanti) 2019.
Initially, the ban came into effect in urban and was later extended to all rural pockets of the State.
The State government had also ordered all producers and stockists of single-use plastic to exhaust their stocks so that manufacture, import, stocking, distribution, sale and use of identified single-use plastic would be banned from July 1, 2022.