In a bid to curb the air pollution and comprehensive maintenance of roads in the national Capital, the Delhi Cabinet on Wednesday approved the Public Work Development (PWD) proposal authorising the agency to carry out sweeping of the roads by employing machines.
As roadside dust and construction sites are majorly contributed pollutants in city air, the Cabinet approved the proposal authorising the PWD to carry out mechanised sweeping of PWD roads to begin with, and introduce Mechanised Stack Parking System on PWD roads.
The proposal passed in the view to overcome the concentration of Particulate Matters (PM) in city air. “The dust gathered on roads due to improper or non-cleaning of roads is compounded further by lakhs of vehicles running on Delhi roads. Manual sweeping of roads contributes further to rising levels of air pollution since fine particles fly off during sweeping and remained suspended on the surface thereafter,” as release stated.
“The expenditure for this work shall be borne under the capital head of Roads and Bridges,” said a senior Government official.
Meanwhile, Delhi Ecologists said that besides the plantation, this step is a welcome move and should be emulated by other civic bodies. “Roads come under the MCDs, SDMC and other agencies should also follow this,” said the Ecologist. “loose soil and a rapid growth in urbanisation in the capital is becoming the reason of high concentration, in such situation, PWD initiative is appreciable,” he added.