‘Vital to teach kids about care for the environment’
MIRI: Children must be taught the importance of caring for the environment as ignorance on the matter will lead to destruction.
In her determination to save the earth one step at a time, Dr Uma Devi received overwhelming response from volunteers including some children in her effort to collect plastic wastes at the illegal car park beside Tamu Muhibbah here last weekend.
“Adults should be the one giving good examples to the kids because what’s dominant is the attitude of the people. Some kids are throwing the plastics around and this is where the responsibility of parents and adults should be manifested into doing noble acts. What’s significant is that we are teaching our children to care for the environment and they will know the importance of having a clean and safe environment as they grow up.
“Since it was a big group, we finished the task of collecting the rubbish within 40 minutes and we brought our own plastic bags and I hope the local council, other government agencies and NGOs will take the initiative to volunteer for such work for at least once a month,” she told The Borneo Post yesterday.
As an environmentalist, Dr Uma’s volunteering work to collect plastic wastes started last year, ‘adopting’ Miri commercial areas for clean-up during weekends and volunteers from the surrounding areas have come up to help her. Most recently, more than 20 volunteers from the Warmonger Training Academy led by Gavin Ghia Mattu, Curtin University Malaysia lecturer, and students and also the Red Crescent members of Institut Latihan Perindustrian ( ILP) Miri assisted her in this noble act.
Expressing her gratitude at the number of volunteers who turned up, Dr Uma is not losing
Dr Uma Devi, an environmentalist
hope that the awareness to protect the environment will continue to increase.
Commenting further, Dr Uma, who is former Miri Hospital director, stressed that by 2050 there will be more plastics than fish in the ocean and the fish industry will definitely be affected by it.
“People’s ignorance will destroy the environmental health, thus I truly hope this effort will continue to be carried out by various government or private agencies as well. Get the children to be involved as well because the children are our future and this is the world they are going to live in. If we don’t care about the environment now, our children are the ones that are going to suffer badly,” she said.