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NAPM activists protest against Cola giants
MOVED BY fresh reports of pesticides in 11 brands of Coca Cola and Pepsi, the activists of Lok Samiti and National Alliance of People?s Movement (NAPM) staged a sit-in at District Headquarters here on Thursday and demanded immediate closure of all the bottling plants of these companies across the country.
MOVED BY fresh reports of pesticides in 11 brands of Coca Cola and Pepsi, the activists of Lok Samiti and National Alliance of People’s Movement (NAPM) staged a sit-in at District Headquarters here on Thursday and demanded immediate closure of all the bottling plants of these companies across the country.
The activists of Lok Samiti, who staged a dharna outside the bottling plant of Coca Cola Company in Mehandiganj area here in Varanasi for around three months from March to May this year, alleged that the government was working under pressure of these multi-national companies and that was why they were serving ‘poison’ to the countrymen.
Referring to the fresh report of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), which claimed that 11 brands of Coca Cola and Pepsi contained ‘a cocktail of 3-5 different pesticides’ which was 24 times above the standard finalised by the Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS), the demonstrators demanded immediate closure of all the bottling plants of these companies across the country.
The demonstrators said that these soft drink manufacturing multinational companies were not only serving ‘poison’ to the countrymen but also were extracting unprecedented underground water which was causing drinking water crisis.
“These bottling plants are causing environment pollution through its waste and polluted water,” alleged the demonstrators.
Apart from this, the Lok Samiti and NAPM activists also submitted a five-point charter of their demands to the District Magistrate to be forwarded to President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam seeking his intervention into the matter.
Prominent among others who addressed the dharna included Nandlal Master, Aflatoon, Rajan Dubey, Mukesh, Suresh, Surendra Rathore and Hari Om Pandey.
