CONCERN: 3 years on, real-time air monitoring system nowhere in sight

A proposal by the Pollution Control Board that would have paved way for monitoring Kashmir’s air quality on real-time basis hasn’t seen any progress in the past three years following poor response to the tendering process.

In 2015, the PCB had announced that it would install a high-end air quality monitoring system in Jammu and Srinagar to provide real-time assessment of ambient air quality in the twin capital cities.

   

But, according to officials, there hasn’t been any headway on the project for the past three years.  

The proposed Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring System (CAAQMS), estimated to cost around Rs 3.54 crore for one station, can provide round-the-clock data on presence of pollutants in the air.

Regional director PCB, Syed Nadeem, said the delay was due to “financial and 

administrative” issues. The Board, he said, had floated tenders for supply, installation and maintenance of CAAQMS many times but it met with poor response.

We had just one bidder for the tender on all occasions but we cannot go ahead in such a situation as per norms, he said.

Nadeem said that due to lack of response to tenders and high cost of the system—much of it was to be funded by the Central Pollution Control Board— no supplier was finalised.

The PCB director said that the Board had requested the government to relax the rules so that monitors could be installed in Srinagar and Jammu.

“The chief secretary has called a meeting on the issue and we are hopeful to resolve it,” he told Greater Kashmir.

The PCB presently monitors air quality at five sites in Srinagar—Rajbagh, Hyderpora, Dalgate, Jehangir Chowk and SKIMS Soura.

However, the monitoring system is manual and it takes over a month for officials to compile the data.

“It’s like in October what we have is the data of August,” a PCB official said.

In absence of real-time air quality data, there is ambiguity about the levels of pollutants in the air in Srinagar, which was listed by the World Health Organisation, earlier this year, as one of the 10 most polluted cities in the world. The WHO assessment report was however dismissed by the PCB.

Later, a report published in Lancet, a leading medical journal, put J&K among top four Indian states in terms of respiratory diseases, attributing it majorly to air pollution and smoking.

With winters approaching fast in Kashmir, hospitals are witnessing a rise in patients with respiratory ailments. While doctors suspect deteriorating air quality in Kashmir as a major cause, lack of real-time ambient air quality monitoring leaves a vacuum of information about presence of dangerous chemicals in the air, according to experts.

Prof Parvaiz A Koul, head of internal and pulmonary medicine at the Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences Srinagar called air pollution in Kashmir “colossal”, especially in winters.

“We need to work rigorously in bringing our pollution levels down and help masses in general and patients in particular to breathe better,” he said.

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