The High Court on Tuesday directed the government to introduce an alert system for issuing urgent cautionary messages in order to protect people from unhealthy, severe unhealthy and dangerous air pollution.
The court also ordered the authorities concerned of the government to fix a time-bound action plan in order to identify the main sources of air pollution and activities and to reduce the pollution.
It also directed the government to submit a report to the court regarding the compliance of the mentioned instructions.
The division bench of Justice Mustafa Zaman Islam and Justice Md Atabullah issued the directives.
The directives were made following a petition filed by rights organization Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (Bela) seeking necessary orders to implement the directives issued by another bench on February 15, 2022 on this issue.
According to the petition, the officials concerned have not issued any cautionary message under the relevant rules to save people though the air pollution in Dhaka was unhealthy, severe unhealthy and dangerous on most days in the last week of December, 2023 and in January this year.
Bela had previously filed a public interest litigation (No-2014/2022) aimed at curbing air pollution in Dhaka.
Following the writ petition, the HC on February 15, 2022 directed the officials to identify the sources of major air pollution in the country, submit a report on the government's action plan to curb the pollution and its implementation and to identify and make a list of the activities, which are mainly responsible for air pollution.
It asked the authorities to prepare a time-bound mitigation plan for setting up air quality monitoring systems in appropriate places and introduce a system to save people from the exposure to unhealthy air.
The HC also issued a rule asking the responsibilities to explain why their failure to mitigate air pollution and to save public health should not be declared illegal and against the public interest and why they should not be directed to control and improve the air pollution.
Secretaries concerned of the ministries of cabinet division; local government and rural development; forest, environment and climate change; industries; housing and public works; health and family planning; road, transport and bridges; and finance and mayors of Dhaka north and south city corporations; director general of department of environment; chairman of Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha; chief engineer of roads and highways department; chairman of Bangladesh road transport authority and director (monitoring and enforcement) of DoE have been made respondents to the directives and rule.
Lawyer Hasanul Banna stood for Bela while Assistant Attorney General Md Selim Azad represented the state during the hearing of the petition on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Dhaka ranked fourth on the list of cities worldwide with the worst air quality with an AQI score of 173 at 8:55am on Tuesday.
Dhaka’s air was unhealthy, according to the Air Quality Index.