The Environment Department of the government will propose quarterly third party audit of air pollution in the city, increase public involvement, add more locations to list of air pollution hot spots to address the air pollution in the city in the meeting with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday, said officials on Tuesday.
“The Delhi Pollution Control Committee[DPCC] does not have the manpower or resources to take stock of the ground-level situation across the city and that is why we think that it will be better if a third party does it for us. Also, there will be better documentation if we have more people working on it. It is up to the Chief Minister to take a call on whether to go ahead with it or not,” a senior DPCC official said.
If the plan is approved, the government will then float a tender to hire an organisation to do the audit. “We would also propose in the meeting that there should be better public involvement in solving air pollution like the government had done in the fight against dengue. We are already in touch with an agency, which is ready to do pro-bono work on developing different creatives. We then plan to take it to people through newspaper and television advertisements,” the official said.
‘Individual effort’
The plan is to convey people what can be done on an individual-level to reduce air pollution.
In 2019, the Delhi government had run an extensive campaign on how to prevent dengue with Mr. Kejriwal and other Ministers featuring in videos and photos and through advertisements in different mass communication channels.
“We would also propose to add more areas to the list of air pollution hot spots in the city and better monitoring of these areas, followed by a strong escalation mechanism,” the official said.
Real-time study
The officials will also discuss with the Chief Minister about a real-time source appropriation study being done by the University of Washington in St. Louis, on identifying what are the causes of air pollution.
“The study started last March and we will discuss how to go ahead with the results generated from it and how to use it in formulating future plans,” the official added.