If a wrongdoer spits on the road in Pune, cops will force him/her to clean it, after which, the s/he will be asked to pay a hefty fine. But what happens when you knowingly or unknowingly spit in Britain’s city of Leicester? The latter city has a large section of Indian-origin people and the city has seen people repeatedly committing mistakes by spitting paan in public places.
Many of the Indian-origin population of the city enjoy chewing paan but now the local council feel the habit of spitting out the residue has got out of control.
Leicester City Council officials are planning to bring a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) in an attempt to try to stop the spitting along parts of Melton Road and Belgrave Road, known popularly as the Golden Mile owing to the several number of jewellery stores owned by many Gujarati-origin businessmen.
In case you didn’t know, Paan is a blend of tobacco, nuts and spices and is wrapped in a leaf. It is mainly chewed by members of the South Asian community in the UK.
Local traders and residents in Belgrave feel disgusted with their pavements which are being stained with red paan remains, as per ‘Leicester Mercury’. A city council spokesperson said: “We are aware of this problem which is unhygienic and leaves unsightly staining on pavements.
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“We are looking at including paan spitting in a future city-wide Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) which would give us more powers to tackle it.
“Our cleansing teams went out last year at the request of ward councillors and used anti-graffiti spray equipment to remove the paan from walls and dustbins, but the staining is very difficult to remove.”
A few years ago, a London council had also taken stringent action against this act among many of its Indian-origin population. Brent council launched an education campaign about the issues of paan spitting and the wrongdoers would be charged 80 pounds.
Following this, the area witnessed a tremendous improvement and now plans to re-launch the campaign to increase further awareness on the issue.