City Desk :
The government has initiated a move to monitor air quality in road side areas under Dhaka and Chattogram City Corporation and also to identify the extent of air pollution caused by vehicles there.
The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) recently approved a project to this end titled “The Project for the Improvement of Equipment for Air Pollution Monitoring” with an estimated cost of TK 103.35 crore.
Of the total project cost, TK 35.51 crore will come from the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) portion while the rest of TK 67.84 crore as grant from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), reports BSS.
The project area covers Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC), Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) and Chattogram City Corporation.
The specific goals of the project are to identifying the sources and extent of air pollution related to road transport, framing effective policy and implementation strategy for reducing air pollution and curbing health hazards related to air pollution and thus facing socio-economic challenges.
The project will be implemented during the period from March 2025 to June 2028 by the Department of Environment (DoE) under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
This Japanese grant will be utilized for enhancing the capacity to measure and analyze air pollutants derived mainly from vehicle emissions through setting up Continuous Air Monitoring Stations (CAMS) for analyzing the impact of vehicle emissions in Dhaka and Chattogram, thereby contributing to the enhancement of air pollution control capacity.
Commenting on the project after its approval by the ECNEC, Planning Adviser Dr Wahiduddin Mahmud termed the project as a ‘nice’ one and said that the government was yet to identify properly to what extent air pollution is taking place in the country due to vehicles.
