Negligent urbanites in Hyderabad give pollution checks a miss

HYDERABAD:  Rising pollution levels continue to be of concern for all. But how often do we ensure that we are not contributing to this grave problem? According to data from the two traffic police commissionerates in Hyderabad and Cyberabad, close to 5,400 people have been penalised for driving without valid Pollution Under Control Certificates (PUCs) in the last five months. 

While the number of defaulters is 802 in Cyberabad, in Hyderabad it has gone up to 4,644, indicating citizens are themselves not very keen on ensuring they leave the least carbon footprint. Having a PUC certificate for motor vehicles is mandatory as per the MV Act, and one is required to renew it every six months at any of the RTA-approved PUC centres. 

These centres issue PUC certificates only if the pollution levels in carbons and suspended particulate matter are under control. If any vehicle is found polluting more than the accepted levels, they have to service the vehicle and reapply for the certificate. Non-compliance fetches a fine of Rs 1,000. These inputs are crucial as the theme of this year’s World Environment Day is ‘Air Pollution’ and in India, especially urban places like Hyderabad, motor vehicles contribute a major proportion to the air pollution. The laxity on part of urbanites in not ensuring their vehicles leave the least amount of pollutants can prove costly for themselves.

Major pollutants 
While the ill-maintained diesel vehicles are the main contributors to the problem, petrol vehicles are not behind as older vehicles without servicing can generate higher amount of Particle Pollution (PM) 2.5 and PM 10 which are seen as the major pollutants that can cause deadly respiratory diseases. Meanwhile, city experts note that the government must work towards devising new vehicle share schemes suitable for urban areas in terms of investing more on MMTS and RTC models which can carry more people. “Car travel consumes maximum energy, 2.9 megajoules per kilometer/per passenger while bus consumer 0.25 mega joules per passenger, kilometer. 

Train travel consumes the least with 0.1 megajoules/passenger, kilometer,” noted Sagar Dhara, an expert on air pollution. To put this into further context, he said that as on 2012, cars took up eight per cent of travel load but consumed 40 per cent of energy from fossil fuels, whereas buses took up 66.4 per cent of travel and consumed just 28 per cent of energy. Meanwhile, police officials and RTA are planning to further tighten their noose on polluters with the existing machinery in place. 

“At present, in pollution checks, we don’t impose fine based on how polluting a vehicle is or how much black smoke it is emitting. Instead we check if they have a certificate to prove their vehicle is non-polluting. So only during physical checks we can catch hold of defaulters,” said Inspector Narsingh Rao, e-Challan team of Hyd police.

New software to ensure vigil 
According to Inspector Narsingh Rao, e-Challan team of Hyderabad police, based on traffic department’s inputs the RTA is developing a new software that will ensure that details of PUC, licence and vehicle registration are available with the police when they feed in the vehicle registration number. This will ensure stricter vigil on defaulters

Urgent need to change ways  
Stressing on the theme of this year’s World Environment Day, ‘air pollution’, city environmentalists from Forum for a Better Hyderabad asked children to reflect upon how they were causing pollution and urged them to tinker the minds of their parents and family to do the same and change their ways urgently