Importation of polythene bags is illegal

Editor, How ironic! Just wondering how harmful the bags are. This is happening at the same time the government is announcing in the media of its plans to scale up mining activities. (Don’t you know how harmful that is to the environment? Equally, the Ministry of Agriculture is promoting the use of pesticides to achieve as fast as possible “development”, yet pesticides contaminate the ground and water, and could as well cause cancer.It is absurd that someone gets arrested for smuggling in a few plastic bags yet officials continue to promote unfriendly environmental policies.James K, Butare************I wish to respond to my fellow reader, James, on the issue of polythene bags. All the activities he pointed out may indeed be similarly damaging to the environment but they are not (yet) illegal.The unlicensed importation into Rwanda of polythene is illegal and so the police are only doing their job in this case. In which case I fail to get James’ point: should the police have done nothing or should Rwanda also ban mining and the use of pesticides to satisfy his sense of environmental perfection?Mwene Kalinda

Opinions

Importation of polythene bags is illegal