KATHMANDU, April 11: Upon inspection by a team of officials from the Metropolitan Traffic Police Office (MTPO) and the Department of Transport Management (DoTM), 53 percent of the vehicles checked for their level of pollution contribution failed the Public Vehicle Pollution Test.

Since April 4, the MTPO has been running the vehicle pollution check as a part of its nine-point working procedure for three months. According to the MTPO, the emission of 539 random vehicles in the valley has been checked as of Wednesday. Of them, 255 failed the pollution test. Of the checked vehicles, 248 were diesel-run vehicles while the remaining 291 were petrol-run vehicles.

Spokesperson for the MTPO, Superintendent of Police (SP) Jayram Sapkota lamented the situation the vehicles in the capital claiming that the people of the valley should be more responsible towards pollution control. “If the supposedly educated population of the valley is making use of such vehicles, the situation across the nation could be even worse,” he said.

He added that even though the MTPO has plans to run such vehicle pollution tests in all parts of the capital, it has been running the test at any two random locations in the valley for the past six days due to the shortage of pollution testing equipment.

The MTPO has been making use of two of the vehicle pollution testing equipment of the DoTM for the checkup. In total, the DoTM has three such equipment and one of them has to be kept in its office for the regular pollution check of vehicles.

According to SP Sapkota, one of the two equipment currently being utilized by the traffic police, went out of order on Tuesday reducing the police to only one such equipment. Concerned police officials have said that the police do not have the right to buy the pollution testing equipment for their own use.

“On the one hand, we neither have the right to procure such equipment nor the DoTM has enough equipment,” SP Sapkota said, “On the other, one of the two available equipment has become non-functional.”

Officials from the MTPO claim that it is not right to let only the DoTM procure such equipment since the traffic police, too, should have such equipment. “What is the use of the equipment to the office dwellers of the department,” one high-ranking official from the office said, “Since such equipment come handy to the police, the police should also be allowed to acquire them.” SP Sapkota said that the MTPO has been making efforts to ensure that the office too can buy such equipment.

 
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