By Norrasyidah Arshad
SHAH ALAM, April 6 — The Selangor government will further strengthen its awareness campaign on the harm of using plastic bags through talks and discourse programmes.
State executive for consumer affairs Mohd Zawawi Ahmad Mughni said there is also a plan to conduct a study on the awareness level among the community to ensure that the state government’s aim to protect the environment and health would be met.
“This Thursday (April 8) we will decide on the next course of action, as we can see that plastic bag usage among the people is still high.
“We will use the service of the public institution of higher learning to determine whether the public has the money and is willing to pay the plastic bag charge, or forgot to bring the reusable bags while shopping,” he said.
He said his team and the Environment Standing Committee had previously proposed to increase the plastic bag charge but the matter has yet to be decided.
“All the collected fees were used to run the awareness activities. We hope the community will give their cooperation and the campaign target is achieved,” he said.
Last month, state executive councillor for environment Hee Loy Sian announced that RM6.4 million were collected from the 20 sen per plastic bag charge.
