Planned afforestation and promotion of eco-friendly practices have helped significantly reduce air pollution in Rajshahi city.
Rajshahi city dwellers are now getting cleaner air than they used to get few years back, city authorities claimed.
Quoting data recorded in ‘Round the clock Air Monitoring Station’ Mamunur Rashid, Deputy Director of Department of Environment (DoE), said levels of larger PM (particulate matter composed of various substances such as black carbon and mineral dust) dropped from 195 micrograms per cubic metres in 2014 to 63.9 in 2016, a reduction of about two-thirds and the largest in the world in absolute terms.
Smaller particles also halved to 37 micrograms per cubic metre from 70, it added.
Rashid said emission of toxic gas from motor vehicles went down to a great extent as most of the cars and busses were converted into CNG-run while auto- riskshaws using battery.
Besides, the city authorities have long been carrying out tree plantation and promotion of good practices for improving air quality and maintaining environment, said Mosaddique Hossain Bulbul, Mayor of Rajshahi City Corporation (RCC).
“We planted more than 5,000 trees on 10-kilomter roads and encouraged citizens for building fruit orchards. The corporation won the prime minister’s national award for tree plantation in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013,” he said.
The city corporation is also implementing a project titled ‘Zero soil’ to cover all the available top soils with green and various trees,” Mayor Bulbul said adding that more than 14,000 Neem tree saplings were distributed among school students free of cost recently for transplantation.
The corporation is constructing footpaths covering the open soil on roadsides, improving the drainage system, increasing mango orchards and beefing up the cleansing operations, the mayor said.
RCC’s existing practice of nighttime household waste and garbage removal and dumping those to a remote place has also a significant contribution to reducing environmental pollution.
“We have separate arrangement for collection of medical wastes from both public and private clinics and diagnostic centers and hygienic management of those,” said Sheikh Mamun, Chief Conservancy Officer.
Prof Khalequzzaman, a senior teacher in Department of Zoology of Rajshahi University, said the emerged greenery in and around Rajshahi city would instantly catch one’s eyesight if one notices the city’s topography from an airplane or any multistoried building.
Massive afforestation and other activities for greenery in the past 10 to 12 years worked for reducing the air pollution level in Rajshahi,” said Prof Chowdhury Sarwar Jahan of Department of Geology and Mining in Rajshahi University.
Apart from RCC, many government agencies like Rajshahi Development Authority, Barind Multipurpose Development Authority and Local Government Engineering Department are also working on improving environment, reports BSS, Rajshahi.
