KARACHI, Sept 9: Sindh Environment and Alternative Energy department has planned to launch a province-wide campaign against noisy and smoke-emitting vehicles, including the rickshaws, from Oct 1.

Speaking at a meeting of the department, the advisor to chief minister on environment, Noman Saigal, approved a plan on Wednesday, under which legal action, including issuance of notices and challans, would be taken against the vehicles involved in causing noise or air pollution.

It was observed during the meeting that section 15 of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act-1997 provided for legal action against pollution-causing vehicles. The advisor expressed concern over an alarming increase in the level of pollution in the city due to rickshaws, old buses and other vehicles, and expressed his intention to phase them out.

Talking to Dawn, the secretary of the department, Shamsul Haq Memon, said that during the October campaign, in addition to legal action, drivers of faulty vehicles would be persuaded to adopt corrective measures, so that air and noise pollution could be contained.

He said that in addition to employing traffic police for checking of vehicles, meetings would be held involving all the stake-holders to educate them about the hazards of pollution, and measures to reduce that, besides informing them about the legal aspects of the issue.

According to experts, the vehicular and industrial emissions are among major factors responsible for environmental pollution. According to an estimate, over 1.2 million vehicles are plying in the urban areas of the province.

Experts say that air pollution due to vehicular emissions can be reduced at different levels by enacting laws and implementing them effectively, installation of pollution control devices for switching over to cleaner fuel, and through design modifications to phase out obsolete technologies.

Many of the rickshaw drivers and owners blame poor quality of lubricants for chocking of silencers of their vehicles. To get rid of the headache of frequent cleaning and refixing of choked silencers, they usually do away with the silencer's muffler, resulting in more smoke and noise emission.

Most of the rickshaw drivers, when contacted, also claimed that the anti-emission or noise controlling devices marketed so far were either beyond their purchasing capacity or were monopolized by a single source.

In the meantime, according to a handout, Mr Saigal has said that a plan was under consideration to phase out two-stroke rickshaws from the city and replace them with four-stroke vehicles.

The advisor said that the rickshaw owners would be convinced to switch over to four-stroke engines for the cause of better environment, for which they would either be provided with the required engines on subsidized rates, or assisted to acquire leasing facility.