GURUGRAM: To check the rising pollution levels in the city and to give some relief to commuters at traffic junctions, the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) has planned to install 65 air purifiers at key city junctions under the Air Care project which will be launched virtually by chief minister Manohar Lal Khatar on Wednesday.
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The project is being executed by GMDA along with Glaxosmithkline. “Given the high pollution levels in the city, we have decided to install 65 state-of-the-art WAYU air purifier units in areas where the air quality index is recorded in the higher side,” said a senior GMDA official. The first air purifier has already been installed near the GMDA office in Sector 44.
Earlier, GMDA had planned to install 10 air purifiers and had identified areas, including Bakhtawar Chowk, IFFCO Chowk, Rajiv Chowk, Subhash Chowk, Jharsa Chowk, Atul Kataria Chowk and Vatika Chowk for the same.
According to officials, they have now asked Indian Pollution Control Association (IPCA) to carry out a survey to identify the junctions where the air purifiers need to be installed. Once installed these devices will bring relief to commuters, who have to wait for several minutes at the traffic signals and inhale the polluted air, especially those on two wheelers.
To check bad air, the metropolitan authority did set up a network of low cost air quality monitors last year, which enables it to regularly assess the quality of the air at different locations in the city.
Other than the air purifiers, GMDA is also planning to set up an AQI network with 150 monitors. An analytical system is also being drawn up to study and understand the sector-wise data from the network for hourly, daily and seasonal variations in the PM2.5, PM10 and AQI levels.
At present, GMDA has around 18 air quality monitors and the data from these monitors is updated in real time on the GMDA app. It remains to be seen if the project for the installation of the purifiers is executed in time for the pollution season.