Vehicle check-up: Campaign against polluters to resume in two weeks

Public transport unions to be warned to fix vehicles within a week or face penalties.

LAHORE:

A campaign to penalise vehicles causing excessive air or noise pollution, inactive since the end of last year, will be relaunched in two weeks, it was decided at a meeting at the Punjab Environment Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters here on Wednesday.

Four teams consisting of an official each from the EPA, the traffic police, and the Regional Transport Authority (RTA) will begin monitoring traffic and fining vehicles at congested areas such as Batti Chowk, Azadi Chowk and the Lower Mall, said EPA spokesman Naseemur Rehman Shah. They will work daily, he said.

The teams will check all vehicles, but will concentrate on public transport, since rickshaws, buses and vans are the most frequent offenders. An additional deputy commissioner will meet with rickshaw and bus unions this week and warn them that their members will be fined should their vehicles be found to be emitting black smoke or making too much noise.

Shah said that many buses and vans were installed with multitone pressure horns, which are illegal. Many rickshaws operate without a baffle, which improves fuel use but results in a loud rattling noise. Public transport vehicles also commonly use adulterated engine oil, which damages engines and causes high levels of carbon emissions.

“We are allowing them a week’s time to fix things,” he said. EPD inspectors would also take action against industrial units adulterating engine oil with impurities and then selling it to public transport vehicles at cheaper prices.



The inspection teams will also fine bus and van drivers for “pointlessly honking while trying to make their way in traffic,” Shah said.

The additional deputy commissioner, who represented the DCO at the meeting, was also asked to enforce the ban on two-stroke rickshaws operating on The Mall, Canal Bank Road, Jail Road and Gulberg’s Main Boulevard.

The campaign has been inactive since the end of last year due to a staff shortage, according to EPA officials. Younas Zahid, the deputy district officer (environment), said that the lack of inspectors had been brought up at the meeting.

Five of the EPA’s eight inspectors in Lahore are currently busy checking warehouses and scrap yards for dengue mosquito breeding sites, while three are engaged in checks on polluting factories, he said.

“How can I give them additional duties to monitor polluting vehicles? The secretary has said he will arrange for more men to resume the drive against polluting vehicles. Let’s see.”

The RTA also claimed a lack of staff, since they only have three motor vehicle examiners and at least one must remain at the office at all times to issue fitness certificates. The meeting decided not to include motor vehicle examiners in the monitoring teams.

A follow-up meeting will be held on Saturday or Monday, said Shah.

EPA Secretary Sher Alam Mahsud, Additional Deputy Commissioner (General) Asfandyar Baloch, Traffic DSP Arif Mahmood, RTA Secretary Mian Mohsin and EPA Director General Farooq Mehmood Sheikh attended the meeting.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 21^st, 2013.