YANGON City Development Committee and the National Commission for Environmental Affairs have welcomed the introduction of equipment checks on vehicle exhaust emissions, saying it will help to reduce pollution levels in the capital.

The Road Transport Administration, under the Ministry of Rail Transportation, has been using the equipment at its Ywathargyi branch since October 1 as part of roadworthiness checks on buses and commercial vehicles.

The department carries out the inspections, using equipment acquired for K63.5 million, when the vehicles are checked for their annual license renewals. They are issued with a Vehicle Inspection Certificate if they pass five tests, including for exhaust emissions.

The department launched a vehicle exhaust emission control project in 1999-2000, which involved visual checks.

“Vehicle owners have been paying more attention to the condition of the engines to reduce emissions since the project began,” said the department’s chief engineer, U Khin Maung Lin. He said surprise visual checks conducted by the department throughout Yangon for several years had also contributed to reductions in exhaust emissions.

The owners of vehicles with excessive emissions are required to have them repaired, said U Khin Maung Lin.

In 2004, 132,619 vehicles were checked at the department’s headquarters and four branches throughout Yangon, of which 1551 were required to undergo repairs because of excessive emissions.

From January to October this year, 107,363 vehicles were checked, of which 1416 failed to pass the visual checks.

“There are about one million licensed vehicles in Myanmar, of which 650,000 are in Yangon Division,” U Khin Maung Lin said.

The department’s director, U Aung Myint, said the number of vehicles in Myanmar was lower than that in Bangkok, where there were more than six million vehicles.

“So we think that pollution from vehicles is not a serious problem,” he said, adding that the exhaust emission project was helping to keep the situation under control.

The Yangon City Development Committee and the National Commission for Environmental Affairs said that while the equipment checks on vehicles were a step in the right direction, more air pollution control activities, including the use of monitoring devices and air quality indicators, would be needed in the capital in the long term.

The head of the YCDC’s Pollution Control and Cleansing Department, U Lin Tun Myint, told Myanmar Times that general levels of environmental pollution in Yangon were acceptable.

“According to the visual and other evidence, such as that involving odours, the level of environmental pollution in Yangon remain under permissible levels,” he said.

U Lin Tun Myint said a reason for this was that the level of industrialisation in Myanmar was not as high as other countries.

However, U Lin Tun Myint said that as Yangon’s population continued to expand beyond its current figure of more than five million, it would be necessary to install equipment to monitor air quality.

He said the awareness and participation of all sectors of society were important to help keep air pollution as low as possible.

U Lin Tun Myint said more public education programs about the negative effects of pollution, as well as penalties for breaching environmental standards, would be needed in the future.

The joint secretary of the National Commission for Environmental Affairs, Daw Yin Yin Lay, said air pollution was one of the main challenges affecting urban areas and the installation of measuring devices would be useful, partly because of the need to gather data to assist control measures.

Daw Yin Yin Lay said the commission was holding discussions with the United Nations Environment Program on a plan to measure air quality in Yangon early next year.

“If we can acquire basic data, we will be able to consider further steps,” she said.

Daw Yin Yin Lay said that as the number of vehicles and factories in Yangon increased, it was inevitable that there would be an impact on the environment.
She agreed with U Lin Tun Myint that pollution control laws, as well as environmental standards for the industrial sector, would need to be introduced.