PAC finds serious lapses in pollution control by railways

NEW DELHI: A parliamentary panel has found serious lapses in railways' pollution control measures and observed that the national transporter has not issued any comprehensive guidelines for transporting pollution-intensive commodities like coal, iron ore, cement, fertiliser and petroleum.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in its latest report has said that the Central Pollution Control Board had also failed to issue any guidelines for the transport of these commodities.

The 22-member committee, headed by K V Thomas, was dismayed to note that all the guidelines issued by the Railway Ministry did not yield the desired results in controlling the emission of pollution from transporting pollution-intensive commodities as these are guided by commercial considerations only.

On noticing that despite its commitment to alleviate the environmental impact of carriage and handling of sensitive cargo, no substantitive action was taken by the railways to integrate environmental concerns with operational policies, the committee has impressed upon the ministry to formulate a comprehensive and more reliable environment policy for coordination with the central and various state pollution control boards.

It has suggested that the Railway Ministry should ensure regular and effective monitoring to ensure strict compliance with the pollution control laws at all levels so that advance and corrective steps are taken to minimise air pollution.

PAC was perturbed to note that railways had neither initiated any measure to fix standards for emissions from the use of diesel for traction purposes nor any system had been set up to monitor the emissions from diesel locos and assess or compare the extent of emissions with the international standard.

It noted that there were no instructions to the zonal railways for regular monitoring of emission levels and, thus there was no such monitoring anywhere in the railways.

Out of 16 zones, bio-diesel was used only in five zones. The railways also did not have any inhouse bio-diesel production facility except at experimental level in some plants.