Minister issues an environmental warning

Chamikara WEERASINGHE

Environment and Natural Resources Minister Champika Ranawaka yesterday cautioned against an increased trend of ground water, air and environment pollution in limited lands as manifesting due to overuse of earth's resources. He said global warming may spread diseases and there may be increase in mosquitoes, cockroaches, flies and bugs as a result.

Ranawaka said, of the people who have been inflicted with dengue fever in Sri Lanka , 35 per cent are housewives and 28 per cent are school children.

"Keeping the environment clean is everybody's responsibility. It is also a personal and individual responsibility. It is not clean sport to blame others if you yourself do not contribute to the cleanliness of the environment you live in ."

Minister Ranawaka was speaking at an environment workshop on Waste Disposal Management at Muslim Ladies' College,Colombo, where he handed over several Pilisaru trash bins to the school under the Environment Ministry's National Post Consumer Plastic Waste Management Project. He said it is of utmost importance to train children in good environment practices to control the planet's deteriorating environment.

"When anything is at the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong way, it will become waste. But if it should be in the right place at the right time in the right way it will become useful,"the Minister said.

"We have a policy to reduce the generation of plastic and polythene waste in the 3R way by reducing, reusing and recycling the resources and products," he said.

Ranawaka said they have taken the 3R message to 200 schools in the country through Pilisaru Pola where schoolchildren brought reusable plastic and polythene waste to the school ground and sold them to buyers. "The money earned by the schools were made use of to develop their school libraries and sometimes to paint their buildings," he said.