SHILLONG, APR 16: Concerned over the environmental degradation due to increased man-made activities, the Meghalaya Eco-Friendly Students’ Union (MEFSU) on Wednesday demanded that the state government should come up with a comprehensive mechanism to tackle and ensure that the environment is preserved and protected from such activities.
“The need of the hour is for the state government to have a comprehensive mechanism in place in order to ensure that the environment is not further polluted and degraded by human activities,” MEFSU president Rangdajied Marwein told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday.
Pointing out that the felling of trees and sand mining activities have been the main source of livelihood to the people of the region which has affected the environment, Marwein suggested that there is need to create employment avenues by introducing different schemes to serve as an alternate livelihood for such people.
“This will to a great extent minimize the exploitation against the environment,” he added.
Asserting that the use of plastic should be totally ban in the state, Marwein said, “The state government is also requested to come up with a sophisticated non-biodegradable waste management because the plastic items carries with them deadly cancer agents which pollutes the air we breathe,” adding “We urged the people as well to say no to plastics.”
Meanwhile, the union also said that it would soon meet chief minister Dr Mukul Sangma to pressurize the government on the need to declare all commercial areas in the state as ‘No Smoking Zone’ in compliance with the Supreme Court ruling.
The MEFSU is a newly formed organization having membership of around 700 students from different educational institutions in the state with the motto– ‘Think Clean and Think Green’.
“Through the union, we also aimed at garnering public support and propagating the message on the need to save our environment,” Marwein exhorted.
Stating that being literate and being educated are two different things, Marwein said through their campaign, they want to educate people on the importance of the environment while quoting the famous phrase – ‘we have not inherited this world from our ancestor, but we have borrowed this world from our future generation.’
According to Marwein, the union believes that protecting the environment by keeping it clean can be a boon to the tourism industry while citing Mawlynnong as an example.- By Our Reporter
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