State Minister for Environment and Forest Jafrul Islam Chowdhury formally inaugurated the CAMS, the first of its kind set up under the World Bank financed Air Quality Management Project, at Chittagong Television Centre (CTV) premises.

While inaugurating the CAMS, the state minister said the station would be monitoring criteria of pollutants on a continuous basis round the year. It would provide information and data to help adopt future strategy towards abatement of pollution from various emission sources like motor vehicles, industrial units, brick kilns and marine sources.

Thus it would also help frame laws in containing the emission, said the minister.

He said ambient air needs to be cleaned to safeguard people, specially children and elderly persons, from various types of lung and heart diseases.

Referring to the ban on two stroke three wheelers in Dhaka and Chittagong city since January 2003 the minister said, through this step $25 million of the government could be saved annually in terms of public health.

The minister informed the inaugural ceremony that efforts were on to reduce brick kilns and other industrial emissions that contribute to air pollution.

He also said that such CAMS would be set up in all the divisional towns to bring them under a network.

Senior officials of Department of Environment and Chemito Technologies Private Limited, India and representatives from Environment SA France also attended the function.