From being a critically polluted city till last year to a 100-point improvement in the Air Quality Index (AQI) this year, Mandi Gobindgarh, the steel city of Punjab, is undergoing a transformation that has lessons for many other cities.
Till last year, the city, which is home to rolling mills and induction furnaces, had an annual average AQI score ranging from 300 to 325. This placed the city in the worst AQI category of “hazardous” air quality. But according to Kahan Singh Pannu, Mission Director, Tandurust Punjab Mission (Tandurust means healthy), the city has recorded an annual average of 200-225 on the AQI this year. Though the AQI score is still in the “unhealthy” category yet the decline by one-third in such a short span of time is a remarkable achievement.
The transformation started in 2017 when the Punjab Pollution Control Board started working on getting the furnaces to switch over to side hood suction system with bag filter house, an air pollution control device. The residue ash of the furnace that was earlier making way into the environment, was collected in the side hood.
Read more of this in a report by Kanchan Vasdev published in The Indian Express... (Link given below)
