Fight against air pollution

THE total ban on two-stroke autorickshaws and autotempos, which takes effect today in the capital, promises a new order in the public transport and, more importantly, relatively less polluted air for the city-dwellers. The change would be perceptible within the next few days or weeks, with the smog blanket hovering over the city getting thinner and the air smelling fresher. Beyond visibility, the carbon monoxide and lead count per cubit metre will markedly go down.

The government deserves a round of praise for making this happen. Our appreciation also goes to the specific stake-holders who relented before the imperative necessity for keeping the environment safe for greater public good. This bears an eloquent testimony to how a daunting task can be achieved by the combined weight of governmental will and public support for a legitimate cause.

The air quality, however, may not improve to a level marked standard by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The reason: the two-stroke three-wheelers were not the lone source of air pollution in the transport sector. Therefore, we would like to view the ban as just the beginning. That means the Traffic Department of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) and the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) ought to intensify its lookout for flawed and black smoke-spewing vehicles. Ironically, a sizeable percentage of vehicles attached to different government establishments belong to this group. These are poorly maintained and hardly monitored but still manage to get fitness certificate from the authorities. The same is true for the DMP fleet and the buses run by the Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC). It is true that the BRTC has lately commissioned a number of new single- and double-decker buses. However, it does not seem the old ones in the fleet get as much attention as they should. On the other hand private-ownership buses, trucks and other vehicles, though flawed, more often than not receive clean chit through corruption.

There are other sources of air pollution than just vehicular emission. And one must realise that their contribution to air pollution is no less problematic. The brick kilns could be a case in point. As winter sets in, some 5,000 brick kilns on the outskirts of the capital will go into full swing, burning fossil fuel to bake bricks and spewing sulphur among other toxic elements into the air. The Department of Environment has made air-filters and 120-feet-high chimneys mandatory for the kilns; however, the regulation is hardly enforced. Similar violation could also be detected in other industrial units.

Therefore, the government has to expand its focus beyond the transport sector. Otherwise, the bane posed by other polluters might overshadow the boon the ban on two-stroke three-wheelers would bring about.