New Delhi decreed this Wednesday the school closings until further notice Faced with a suffocating cloud of pollution in the Indian capital, while in nearby Lahore, in Pakistan, citizens lament the inaction of the authorities in the face of this phenomenon.
The air quality it has worsened to very dangerous levels for health in northern India and adjacent areas of Pakistan in recent years due to industrial pollution and smoke from agricultural fires.
With winter temperatures this pollution turns into toxic clouds that envelop cities, make visibility difficult and make the air unbreathable.
Subjected to this phenomenon every winter, New Delhi, with 20 million inhabitants, decreed on Tuesday night the extension until further notice of the closure of schools imposed days ago for only one week.
The concentration of pollutant particles in the air of the capital has reached 30 times the maximum level recommended by the World Health Organization.
To combat this toxic fog, the authorities have installed water cannons in the most critical points that must be put into operation three times a day.
In the order issued by the Air Quality Management Commission, the authorities they also prohibit the entry of trucks with non-essential goods to the city, they paralyze construction tasks and suspend operations in six of the 11 thermal plants located at a rate of 300 kilometers.
They also impose teleworking for half of the public workforce and ask private firms to follow suit.
This order comes days after the Delhi government rejected a request from the Supreme Court of India to declare for the first time a “confinement due to contamination”, which restricts the movement of the population.
Despite this situation in its capital, India was the main responsible for weakening the commitments to eradicate the use of coal at the COP26 climate summit that ended on Saturday in Glasgow.
A report by the Swiss organization IQAir placed 22 Indian cities among the 30 most polluted in the world in 2020.
“We are going to die”
According to the same company, which monitors air pollution data at hundreds of locations, Lahore was the city with the worst air quality in the world on Wednesday morning.
In this city of 11 million inhabitants, next to the Indian border, residents are exasperated at the lack of measures from the administration, which attributes this phenomenon to the neighboring country or claims that the figures are exaggerated.
The children suffer from respiratory problems (…) For the love of God, find a solution, “said the laborer Muhammad Saeed to AFP.
In recent years, Lahore residents have built their own air purifiers and sued the administration to try to improve the situation.
“We can only implore them to control the pollution (…) If this continues, we are going to die,” the trader Ikram Ahmed laments to AFP.
The peon Saeed claims that he has stopped taking his children for a walk in the street due to the toxic air.
“There are factories and small industries operating here. Let them take them elsewhere, give them compensation or equip them with modern technology, so that we can get rid of this fog,” he said.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx