Ludhiana: Citizens join hands for clean air action plan

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, July 28

In a bid to ensure that residents of Ludhiana breathe clean and healthy air, senior officials from Ludhiana, which is often ranked as one of the most polluted cities in the state, along with air quality experts came together for a virtual discussion to not only highlight post-Covid challenges in the implementation of the clean air action plan but also the role of stakeholders in ensuring effective implementation.

The discussion was organised by EcoSikh in collaboration with Clean Air Punjab, a citizen’s initiative. The panel included Swati Tiwana, Joint Commissioner, Ludhiana Municipal Corporation, Gulshan Rai Chief Environmental Engineer, Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB), Kahan Singh Pannu, former IAS and adviser, NHAI, Punjab region, Tanushree Ganguly, from the Council on Energy Environment and Water (CEEW), and Jaskirat Singh.

Over 100 concerned citizens from Ludhiana, which has received a special grant of Rs 26 crore last year to improve air quality in the state’s industrial heartland, attended the session to understand how the authorities were implementing and executing the action plan.

Swati Tiwana said Ludhiana was one of the non-attainment cities and hence, had been getting grants under the 15th Finance Commission from the Central Government, specifically to control the sources of pollution, to neutralise them, if not minimise.

“To counter all damages being caused due to air pollution, efforts must be put in making complete changes on the ground as well as planning in a way that at least in future, we are able to bring down the air pollution levels,” she emphasised.

Explaining that despite Ludhiana being among the nine non-attainment cities in the state, Tanushree Ganguly said it had only one real-time and 4 manual monitoring stations against minimum requirement of 11 monitors.

“However, none of the manual stations report data on PM2.5, transport, dust, industries, and the residential sector were the major pollution sources in the city. Interestingly, existing source apportionment studies for the city point to a significant contribution from sources outside city limits,” she said.

Ganguly stated that besides, the seasonal crop residue burning also deteriorates the city’s air quality. “Therefore, to address pollution in the industrial hub of the state, it would be imperative to ramp up air quality monitoring and generate more evidence on local and regional sources of pollution impacting the city,” she said.

Kahan Singh Pannu mentioned that strict action needs to be instigated against pollution from smoke-spewing factories, especially thermal, paper, cement and chemical plants, besides brick-kilns as these industry owners often deliberately turn off the pollution control devices to save cost, even though effectively installed. “Air quality measuring stations need to be set up at around 100 places in the state to keep an eye on pollution. No violation should be allowed to go unpunished,” he said.

Highlighting the reducing green cover Jaskirat Singh, an environment activist, said Ludhiana had only 1.65 per cent forest cover, which authorities and citizens need to not only protect at all costs but also take efforts to increase.

“Besides other actions under the clean air action plan, we must also conserve our Mattewara forest and all other smaller forests and tree cover in Ludhiana as we and our future generation will need oxygen to breathe and this green cover will help us in improving the air quality,” he stressed.