KARACHI, July 18: All rickshaws in the city will have environment-friendly silencers in the next six months.

Environment-friendly silencers was being introduced with the help of the Environmental Pollution Agency (EPA) and the Karachi Traffic Police, in collaboration with a private silencer manufacturing company, that had the capacity to produce 6,000 silencers a month, the Inspector-General of the Sindh Police, Syed Kamal Shah, said at the introduction ceremony of environment- friendly silencers for rickshaws at the Police Headquarters, Garden, on Thursday.

He said these silencers would help control noise pollution to a great extent. He said 1,500 silencers would ready in the next six months. All rickshaws would have these silencers, which were being produced in accordance with the international standard of 85-87 decibels.

Referring to the failure of similar silencers in 1996, he said there were some causes of the failure of their failure. He said the manufacturing company had made a commitment that they would not increase the price of the silencer from Rs500 apiece and the quality too would be maintained. He said the former silencers were too difficult to use. The new silencers could easily be fixed and unfixed, he added.

He said representatives of rickshaw unions had been consulted and through their suggestions the flaws had been removed.

Mr Shah said he had issued instructions to control air/noise pollution by drawing up organized programmes, like the environment-friendly silencers.

He said campaign to control air pollution should be of longer durations, ie, of more than months.

He was of the view that police were efficiently playing their role in traffic control. The city government should also make the roads wider, maintain footpaths and build flyovers where they were needed, he emphasized.

He said surveillance cameras were needed to be installed at 100 points in the city, but since the camera was expensive, they could not be installed at one go. These cameras would help police check traffic violations and curb crime.

He sought transporters’ cooperation to help control road accidents. He said in future traffic police officers would be awarded who would impose few challans and help maintain smooth flow of traffic.

The city police chief, Asad Jehangir, said 640 people died every year in road accidents in the city. Of them 54 per cent were pedestrians, 22pc motorcyclists, 8pc cyclists and the remaining were others.

Representatives of rickshaw unions also spoke on the occasion and said they were satisfied with the quality, standard and price of the silencer. They requested the manufacturing company to maintain the price and quality.