MANOJ SINHA
Ramgarh, July 5: A meeting-cum-smoking-free declaration ceremony of the District Tobacco Control Coordination Committee was organized under the chairmanship of Hazaribagh Deputy Commissioner Nancy Sahay on Monday.
All the senior officials of the district including the Deputy Commissioner signed the smoking-free declaration and the DC appealed to everyone to keep Hazaribagh city smoking-free.
DC Sahay said, “I am very happy to declare Hazaribagh as a smoking-free city. I would like to thank and congratulate the general public of the district, educational institutions, allied institutions, media and all the officials of Hazaribagh district administration for this achievement.”
Deepak Mishra, executive director of Socio Economic and Educational Development Society (SEEDS), a technical partner organization of the state government, told that the tobacco control program is being run by the state government in all 24 districts.
Districts are declared smoking-free according to the better condition of compliance with Section 4 of COTPA-2003 Prohibition of smoking in public places. 5 districts of the state namely Ranchi, Bokaro, Seraikela-Kharsawan, Dhanbad, Ramgarh and Khunti and Jamshedpur city have been declared a smoking-free districts earlier.
Presiding over the program, the DC appealed to the residents of the district and said, “After a smoking-free city, now we have to start a campaign to make it a tobacco-free district so that our future generations can be saved from the ill-effects of tobacco.”
She also directed all the members of the three-tier guerilla squad constituted for tobacco control to conduct regular raids by removing all the shopkeepers selling tobacco products located within 100 yards of educational institutions.
