Pollution check in Hyderabad takes backseat

Hyderabad: Environmentalists have blamed traffic cops for not looking into vehicular pollution that affects the health of all —motorists and non- motorists — as they have been focussing on helmetless driving. They feel the police is neglecting the pollution aspect.

Expressing concern over the rising pollution, environmentalists said state government agencies like traffic police, RTA and PCB should act with “efficiency and force” before the situation turned worse.

Citing a recent study by the Central pollution control board, they said as high as 212 tonnes of carbon monoxide (CO) is produced a day in the city from vehicular emissions. This was against the 126 tonnes in the late 1990s.

“The situation is not better with hydrocarbons too causing global warming. Particulate matter increased from 1.94 tonnes to 11.9 tonnes a day over the last two decades,” they said.

Environmentalist K. Purushotham Reddy said, “The traffic police is not equipped to tackle vehicle pollution. “Of late, no traffic cops is found checking for pollution certificates,” he said.

Environmentalist S. Jeevanand Reddy said the policy of phasing out of vehicles older than 15 years has not been implemented. Over 8,00,000 such vehicles were polluting the city.

“The RTA, PCB and traffic officials should take the blame for roadside mobile pollution checking units turning into mere certificate issuing centres,” he said.

TS pollution control board senior scientist N Ravinder admitted that vehicular pollution was on the rise and that the air quality index at high traffic density corridors like Punjagutta was over 150. He said traffic cops, PCB and RTA officials would jointly work to curb vehicle pollution.

Pollution check in Hyderabad to turn modern
Road Transport Authorities in cooperation with officials of Pollution Control Board, Traffic Police and Telangana State Technical Services will soon invite tenders for replacing existing roadside mobile vehicular pollution testing units with the latest equipment.

The new system is proposed to be linked with the master servers of RTA and traffic cops to know wh-ich vehicle has undergone the pollution test and its validity.

Additional commissioner of police (Hyderabad Traffic) Jitender said the existing road-side mobile pollution checking units will either be updated or replaced with latest four-gas based analysers and connected on-line with traffic and transport department servers.

This will allow enforcement personnel to cross-check on their cellphone whether the vehicle being checked is within pollution control norms. “Existing units with two-gas analysers have become outdated,” he admitted.

Deputy commissioner of police (traffic) Mr A.V. Ranganath said they are also going to purchase hand-held equipment to be carried by traffic cops allowing them to check the pollution being spewed by vehicles on the spot.
“We will strictly enforce pollution control norms for vehicles,” he added.

Vehicular pollution

• In all, there are over 45 lakh vehicles in Greater Hyderabad.
• Of this over 8 lakh are more than 15-year old vehicles.
• In 2014, over 7.50 lakh new vehicles were registered with RTA offices.
• In 2015, 7.98 lakh new vehicles were registered.