MCG to conduct awareness drive on air pollution on World Environment Day

GURUGRAM: This World Environment Day, the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) has decided to organise ‘Beat Air Pollution’ campaign to aware citizens about the air pollution. A month-long awareness campaign will be conducted with the collaboration of various schools, colleges and non-profit organisations (NGOs) of Gurugram city.

Yashpal Yadav, Commissioner MCG, conducted a meeting on May 29, to discuss modalities of the campaign and to instruct guidelines of the campaign to various MCG officials. MCG will also conduct various waste management workshops for their staff to aware them about such solutions to beat pollution, so that they may present examples for others. Talking to media Yadav said, “There will be daily activities and drives that will be conducted as a part of it.”

According to a senior official from MCG, the motive to conduct such a campaign is to create awareness among citizens not only about their role to control pollution but also to aware them about the process to beat air pollution, such as curbing waste burning, encouraging decentralised segregation and waste management. “MCG will also give special honor to the citizens who alert us to violations and help us take action against violators,” the MCG Commissioner said.

A key source of air pollution in the city is garbage burning, which is triggered by poor management of waste, and we will be focusing on this. Plenty of clean-up drives with citizen volunteers are also being organised for the month of June. We hope that citizens will see themselves as equal stakeholders in the problem.

A worldwide pollution tracking company, IQ Air Visual and Greenpeace, an NGO, released a report three months before claimed that Gurugram had received highest annual concentration of PM 2.5 in the world in 2018, with daily levels averaging out at 135.8 μg/m³, more than 13 times the limit of 10 μg/m³ recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).