Gov't's move on plastic bags ban miscalculated

Looking at the way things are going, one can confidently say that Government’s move to ban plastic bags was not well planned. This is evident as two months after the ban, there seem to be insufficient substitutes. Some people are still using the same plastics which were banned in April under the pretest that there are no substitutes.

According to the Minister of Trade, Helle Pierre, 100 cases of unlawful trade of non-biodegradable plastics have been witnessed but 215tons of these types of plastics have been seized from business men and women since the ban.

The Minister is strongly behind the campaign against non-biodegradable plastics. He is of the opinion that the non-biodegradable plastics can be recycled into biodegradable ones, reason why he calls on everybody to stop using and surrender them to the rightful authorities is to have them recycled.

The question everybody is asking now is, “In the absence of these non-biodegradable plastics, why is the Government not providing us with enough recommended biodegradable plastics? What they know how to do best is seize every day and leave people with nothing to use as a substitute”. The Government does not expect me to stop my business, which is my only source of income. I cannot peel pineapple and tie on leaves. If the Government cannot look for substitutes, which are just as convenient as these plastic bags, I will continue using them,” Godlove Magloire, a pineapple vendor in Melen said.

Emelda Fijong, a teacher at Lycee Bilengue de Etoug-Ebe mentioned that Government did not actually sit dawn to examine the situation before going ahead to ban plastic bags. Government did not carryout a study on businesses in Cameroon. He did not go to the layman on the streets to see how he will be affected by the ban. “We know quite well that non-degradable plastics cause more harm than good health wise, but it could even be more catastrophic if Government does not handle the ban with care, she added”.

However, there are obedient Cameroonians who have respected the ban. But the question now is, “what are they using?” Prisca Ekema, a sales girl in a supermarket at Carrefour Nlongkak, Yaounde, told The Post that they have stopped using non-biodegradable plastics but no substitute is forthcoming. “Every day we are loosing customers because we cannot comfortably put their items in plastic bags. We keep on rapping things in papers and at times before the customer reaches the door of the supermarket, the items drop to the floor. It is really embarrassing. We don’t really know why Government was in a haste to ban plastics, when they had not adequately replaced them with biodegradable ones.

Government should have given us time to adjust because if that were to be the case, I bet you we wouldn’t be suffering like this now,” she complained. The situation is even getting serious because people do not know the difference between the non-biodegradable plastics and biodegradable ones. Recently a large pack of non-biodegradable plastics were seized from a trader at the Mokolo market in Yaounde by the Director of Norms and Standards at the Ministry of Environment, Nature Protection and Sustainable Development, Peter Enoh Ayuk. This was on the afternoon of July 8.

Over 860 non-biodegradable plastics were seized that day and nothing was done to replace them, apart from the promise that the seized plastics were going to be recycled. But according to the traders whose plastics were seized, when they went to buy the plastics, they were told by the vendor that the plastics were the recommended ones. Even up to now, there are many Cameroonians who have not laid eyes on the correct plastics and if they go to buy, they could also get confused and buy the wrong ones.

If Government actually did some research on these plastics before the ban, they would have discovered that it was necessary for them to do an intensive sensitisation, educating the public on how to differentiate between the non-biodegradable and degradable plastics.

They would have also realised the need for a delay in the ban. If they did this, non-biodegradable plastics, still in stock would have reduced and people will no longer be running around with them to illegally sell. There is only one reason to explain why these wrong plastics still circulate in the market and this is because Government did not take time to put in measures to eliminate them before actually introducing the current ones and making them available to the people.

Government has to look into this issue and re-strategise.