The Sindhudurg beach clean-up campaign that was initiated by the state government and the United Nation Development Programme last Saturday, covered 120 km of the state’s coast or 28 beaches of Konkan. An assessment of the waste cleared has shown that irresponsible tourists are littering the place, as a high number of beverage and glass bottles and food packets were found.
In all 4,456 volunteers participated to clean 28 beaches and 1,40,476 trash items were collected over a stretch of 120 kms.
“Some of the key findings of the Sindhudurg Clean Beach Campaign included high numbers of plastic beverage bottles (30,881), glass bottles (21,167), clothing and footwear (19,040), plastic bags (15,165), food wrappers and containers (12,904). This clearly indicates that most of the marine pollution in this area is due to irresponsible tourists on Sindhudurg’s beach fronts,” said Simit Bhagat, communication and outreach specialist for the project.
The other finding is that there are inadequate waste disposal facilities on these beach fronts, resulting in marine pollution. It can be curbed only by way of upgrading existing waste disposal mechanisms as well as awareness programmes.
“The results of these findings will be used in preventive and corrective measures,” said Mr Bhagat.
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MU’s law exam papers still not assessed
K.A. Dodhiya
Mumbai, Jan. 15
With nearly a month-and-a-half gone since the conclusion of the University of Mumbai law exams, the assessment of answer-sheets is not yet completed.
Explaining the delay, D. Wasave, controller of examination, MU said that the low turnout for Central Assessment Programme (CAP) was due to most faculty in law colleges being professionals and not permanent teachers. “The assessment is done by regular teachers, but as the ratio of professionals and teachers is almost equal, the load of assessment falls on the teachers and hence it takes time,” said Mr Wasave.
According to sources, the CAP centres have been seeing very few law faculty professors reporting for assessment work. As a result of this, even though the exams ended on December 8, the answer-sheets of semesters of both the three and five-year courses are pending.
With almost a majority of answer-sheets lying unassessed, the University is bound to miss the deadline and overshoot the stipulated 45-day limit set by the court.