Kaveera ban: Government must stop running in circles

We are at it again. This paper reported on Wednesday that three government bodies have warned against eating food boiled in polythene bags commonly referred to as kaveera. The Ministry of Health, Uganda Cancer Institute, and the National Management Authority (Nema), have said the continued use of kaveera only accelerates one’s journey to the grave.
Unknown to many users, polythene bags and other plastic materials contain substances – plasticizers – that leach into food thus causing non-communicable diseases.
But why do we continue to run in circles over the kaveera issue? Way back in 2009, the government announced a ban on kaveera below 30 microns. The 2010 Statute on Kaveera ban reads: ‘It is prohibited for a person to manufacture, import, sell, use, distribute or otherwise deal in plastic bags except plastic woven bags for the packaging and conveyance of goods and plastics and other exceptional uses specified in the schedule.’
However, the implementation of the ban faced challenges after several groups, especially the manufacturers, lobbied for a grace period to empty their stores of the ploythenes. Nevertheless, in April 2016, Nema, the implementing agency, launched the implementation of the ban with flurry of actions, including raiding major supermarkets in Kampala City, to seize the kaveeras being used.
Consequently, several shopping centres were forced to find alternative packaging materials. Yet many companies continued circumventing the ban and as of today, kaveeras are in use everywhere. The environment is still littered with kaveera as a number of wholesale shops, supermarkets, retail shops, markets, and vendors, etc, continue to pack items for their clients in kaveera. Polythene bags constitute a great danger to our environment. They clog drainage channels as many areas in the urban centres, school compounds, garbage heaps, etc, are littered polythene bags.
So what went wrong with the ban?
The consequences of failure to enforce the ban are dire. Apart from causing diseases, city floods and stagnation of water leading to incidences of diseases, including malaria. are blamed on kaveeras .
Besides, it is estimated that nearly 39,600 tonnes of polythene waste is released into the environment, with much of it accumulating in the soil each year. Given that at least 80 per cent of Ugandans depend on agriculture, the degrading of the soil as a result of polythene accumulation impacts the sector. It is high time the government enforced the ban without fear or favour. It is also imperative that it prioritises provision of alternative packaging materials.