Combating plastic pollution needs implementation of laws; alternative jobs to businessmen.

PESHAWAR -- Unnerved by the PTI government's legislation to combat plastic pollution, Muhammad Yousaf, a sixty-year old shopkeeper was worried about education and other expenses of his children in case his stocks of plastic bags were not sold in the mandatory six months deadline set by the government.

Assisted by his son Arshad Khan in his plastic bags business in Firdus Bazar, Muhammad Yousaf who was extremely upset after adaptation of KP Environmental Protection (amended) bill 2022 under which preparation, delivery, storage, import, sale and purchase of plastic bags was banned in KP, said,' the PTI government has taken this decision in a haste while overlooking the difficulties and problems of thousands of people affiliated with the business.

'Where will we go,' he questioned, adding under the new bill, the shopkeeper could be jailed for six months and fined up to Rs500,000.

He said the provincial government should have consulted and taken the traders and manufacturers of polythene bags into confidence prior to the adoption of the bill besides providing them alternative options to switch.

Yousaf said he had employed six laborers at his shop and it would be difficult for him to pay salaries if the polythene stock is not sold.

Javed Gul Safi, another plastic bag trader, told reporter that about 70 plastic shops were affiliated with the business in the city and they had been running the business since partition, adding that restricting the business was unjustified.

'Such an unpopular and unaccepted decision was not being expected from the PTI government, which was given a mandate to solve the problems of the masses rather than adding woes to their miseries,'' he remarked.

He said 50 KG plastic bags were being sold at about Rs10,000 in market and if their stocks were not sold then hundreds of thousands of labourers would become jobless, adding that they had already paid advance money to manufacturers in Lahore and other cities of the country and several shopkeepers have taken loan to expand their business to meet their finances.

Safi said about 20 polythene bag manufacturers were operating at Hayatabad Industrial Estate with hundreds of labourers and the new law would not only adversely affect their business while also make hundreds of families jobless in such challenging circumstances when inflation was so high in the country.

Latifur Rehman, spokesman of environment and forest department while defending adaptation of KP Environmental...