Finally, administration wakes up to noise

LUDHIANA: Waking up from its deep slumber of nearly five years, the district administration has decided to take up the issue of increasing noise pollution of city as a priority and chalked out a plan in the regard.
Meanwhile, a non-governmental organization, too, was seen on its toes. It has assured the public that on May 30, they would declare the number of illegal generator sets, and pressure horns that are further deteriorating the environment of the city and contributing to the noise pollution.
Talking about it, District Noise Monitoring cell member Krishan Lal Malik, who is also an active member of Bharat
Jan Vigyan Jatha, an NGO, said, “This cell was formed in 2000 and till 2005 we were working actively to save environment, but after that no meeting was convened and nothing positive was done.After a long gap of five years, we were received complaints from the public and now we are planning to go a step further. With each passing day pressure horns is becoming the in-thing, whereas functions at marriage palaces and religious places are also contributing to the already deteriorating environment of the city.”
Notably it has been decided that the meeting of the cell would be a regular feature. Talking about it, additional deputy commissioner Kuldeep Singh said, “Although these things are absolutely banned, sometimes residents forget and to reminder people we have decided to start challaning the violators.” He further said, “We have asked the district transport department and traffic personnel to start challaning the defaulters immediately and in the next meeting, which is scheduled to be held in May, we would review the situation.”
Powercom senior executive engineer Pardeep Gupta said, “For generator sets uptill 10 kilo volts no permission from the electricity authorities are required, but generators more than 10 kilovolts need permission and as per our information these days every business house has generator as the need of power is increasing with each passing day and generators are being used.”
Talking about the illegal generators he said, “We know that people are illegally using generator sets and we do impose fine which is huge and we also plan raids if we get complaints in this regard.”
Notably, the air pollution level of the city is also increasing with each passing day. The figures collected by the pollution board from three different places reveal that sulphur oxide and nutrition oxide is increasing in the air. The ambient air quality taken from the Bharat Nagar Chowk, the content of Respiratory Suspended Particulate Matter (RSPM ) in 2006 was 14 particles of sulphur oxide and 24 of nitrate oxide.
In 2007, it had risen to 39 and in 2008 it increased to 47.