New Delhi, April 8 (IANS) Delhi Transport Minister Gopal Rai on Friday said that to gauge the impact of the second phase of odd-even plan on the capital's air quality, the state pollution panel will monitor the ambient air quality at 119 locations in and around the city.
"Out of 119 locations, monitoring of ambient air quality with special reference to PM (particulate matter) 2.5 and PM 10 will be done with the help of light scattering based technology at 74 locations," he told media persons here.
This monitoring by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) will include random sampling for short durations and will be targeted to know the trend of air quality.
"These 74 locations are on seven borders of Delhi. In these border areas, one sample will be taken inside Delhi, the second sample will be taken on the border while the third sample will be done inside the neighbouring state," Rai said.
In addition, 20 residential locations and 15 industrial areas of Delhi will be monitored using manual samplers, twice between April 6 to 14 and twice during the odd-even Part-II.
Rai also said that elaborate arrangement has been made to execute the scheme properly.
"We have recruited 400 former soldiers in the enforcement wing of the transport department. We will make 120 teams comprising these former soldiers. These enforcement teams will be deployed at major border entry points, major junctions along with metro stations and bus stations for proper execution of the plan," Rai said.
The second phase of odd-even traffic scheme will start on April 15 and will continue for a fortnight.
CNG operated vehicles, central government ministers and VVIPs, women motorists and cars ferrying school students in uniform will be exempt during it.
However confusion over parents going to pick up children after school hours and parents returning home or going to the office after dropping their wards to school still prevails.
Asked over this, Rai said: "We are still working on the modalities and are trying to find out solution to this problem. CM has also invited suggestions from the public in this connection."
"Notification in this regard will be out after we get the solution to this problem," he added.
