Free electricity to three wards of disaster hit areas of Wayanad for 6 months: Kerala power minister
Wayanad: State Electricity Minister K Krishnankutty on Tuesday directed the KSEB to provide free power for six months in the three landslides-hit wards of Meppadi panchayat.
The 1,139 customers who would benefit from this will also not have to pay their outstanding dues, if any, the minister said.
Besides that, Krishnankutty said that the Kerala State Electricity Board's (KSEB) ability to restore power in Chooralmala area, which was isolated following the landslides, helped in the rescue operations.
It was an arduous task to restore power lines that were broken by heavy winds and torrential rains, he said.
"There are 19,000 connections under the KSEB Meppadi section. Out of these, there were 385 household connections and 70 commercial connections in the Mundakkai-Chooralmala disaster areas." These were completely broken, electricity poles and transformers were all destroyed and the damage was estimated to be more than Rs 3 crore, he said.
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Karnataka: Forest Minister Eshwar Khandre unveils plan for scientific disposal of plastic bottles
Bengaluru: In a bid to address the mounting plastic waste problem, Eshwar B. Khandre, Minister for Forests, Ecology, and Environment, has directed the additional chief secretary of the department to formulate regulations that will require packaged water bottle manufacturers to take responsibility for the scientific disposal of plastic bottles.
As part of the proposed plan, Khandre has suggested introducing a minimum price for each water bottle, which would be refunded when the bottle is returned to any establishment selling packaged water, as reported by Deccan Herald on Monday.
Under this initiative, when a person buys a new water bottle, the minimum price for each returned bottle would be discounted from the bill for the new one.
The goal is to ensure that empty bottles are returned to the shops where they were purchased, preventing them from being discarded in public spaces or ending up in the environment. Under the plan, these establishments would then return the empty bottles to manufacturers, who would be responsible for the scientific disposal of the plastic.
Khandre emphasised that the proposed regulations are aimed at tackling plastic pollution more effectively. Although the central government has already banned the manufacture, storage, sale, and use of certain single-use plastics, and the state government has enacted similar regulations, plastic waste continues to be a significant environmental challenge.
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