Plastic garlands to be banned at Kataragama Maha Devale

Minister of Environment Mahinda Aamaraweera has decided to make natural flowers and flowers made of oil paper compulsory for  religious activities in Kataragama Maha Devalaya from March 22.

The Minister said there are about 3 million devotees visiting this Devalaya annually. The visitors buy more than 1 million polythene garlands annually and Kataragama Pradeshiya Sabha has pointed out that more than 20,000 kilograms of garlands are released to the environment after the religious activities.

There are about 300 families working in this industry and steps will be taken to supply them with necessary raw materials and technical instructions.

The minister further said that natural flowers imported from India are used for religious activities at Hindu Kovils in Bambalapitiya. India earns a huge foreign exchange by exporting flowers to Europe and America.

“Therefore we must make the people interested in growing flowers in several villages so that we can stop our foreign exchange going to other countries. In addition we can use the saved foreign exchange to widen the garland industry in the country,” he said.

(M.N.Piyaratne Kataragama)