Motoring guru urges Govt. to rationalise controls on poisonous vehicle emissions threat

Tuesday, 24 December 2013 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Lal Alawatta, a celebrated television personality brooks no nonsense when it comes to discussing harmful vehicle emissions that translate into silent killers as Sri Lanka’s burgeoning vehicle population leapfrogs into millions. While the Government has steadfastly backed the vehicle emission program and Sri Lanka has progressed rapidly in the right direction, the country still lacks a comprehensive long-term emissions control regime. Meanwhile, India has already drawn up a 10-year timeline (2015 to 2025) with near-perfect estimates to clip public health hazards caused by emissions and prune back 40,000 premature deaths currently caused in Indian cities alone annually. Alawatta emphasises that emissions breathed in by over 5 million children comprising Sri Lanka’s student population in five major cities, are invisible killers. Besides sulphuric acid fumes, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, which form photochemical smog, acids, and especially carbon particles which even escape micro-filters cause fatal respiratory, cardiac and vascular invasions. Vehicle testing laws, Alawatta concedes, have helped contain emissions at around 2008 levels despite there being a 90% increase in the vehicle population. Vehicle owners are becoming ‘emissions savvy’ and know that frequent vehicle emission tests not only pay back dividends by way of a thumping 30% fuel saving but also increases the life span of their vehicles by several years and contributes to a higher re-sale price too. The psychological pay-off too is substantial. The mental peace dividend one gets from knowing that respiratory systems of humans and other living things as much as exhaust pipes and combustion chambers of vehicles are not encrusted with harmful gases and particulate matter is quite large. With a BSc. Degree in Mechanical and Automobile Engineering from Nagoya University, Japan and further postgraduate training at BMW, Stuttgart, in the south of Germany as well as in UK and India, Alawatta knows what he’s saying.

He suggests that the Government needs to remove the privilege granted to state vehicles of not needing to carry the emission test certificate demanded by law. He warns that unless we impose strict controls on the quality of fossil fuels now imported, the country will continue to breathe in high dosages of vehicle emissions which continue to wreak havoc on public health. “Land/agricultural vehicles must also be brought under VET regulation. More underground routes and/or flyovers must be constructed to ease traffic congestion that causes heavy emissions, perhaps rationalising road construction and examining its benefits.”