TIRUNELVELI
Collector Shilpa Prabhakar Satish has been selected for the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board’s ‘Special Award for Effective Implementation of Plastic Ban’ in the district.
Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami will present the special award to Ms. Shilpa at the Secretariat on June 13.
Along with Ms. Shilpa, Commissioner of Food Safety and Drug Administration P. Amudha, Principal Secretary, Department of Information Technology Santhosh Babu and Commissioner for Disaster Management Rajendra Ratnoo have also been selected for this award for taking special efforts to enforce ban on the use-and-throw plastic products under their jurisdiction.
When she visited Courtallam in the second week of June last after assuming office on May 25, Ms. Shilpa, on seeing the liberal use of plastic products by the tourists and the traders in the ‘Spa of the South’, raided good number of shops immediately to seize the banned plastic products. The Courtallam town panchayat officials, who were accompanying the Collector during her inspection, had tough time then.
As Ms. Shilpa started visiting Courtallam repeatedly during ‘Season 2018’, the officials were forced to act tough against the traders using or selling the banned plastic products.
She also convened the meeting of the officials attached to the Department of Local Administration – right from village panchayat to the Corporation - and empowered them to seize the banned plastic products being manufactured, stored, sold and used in the areas under their jurisdiction, which yielded desirable results. Since they have to submit monthly reports to the Collector on the seizure of banned plastic products, raids are being conducted in a sustained manner.
The Tirunelveli Corporation, on the Collector’s instruction, has even deployed special teams in all four zones for conducting raids everyday to seize the plastic products. So far, these special teams have seized over 4 tonnes of banned plastic products since January last.
