Kathmandu, July 17

The Department of Environment is preparing to set up three air quality monitoring stations in Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Kavrepalanchowk by August.

According to the department, it has already imported four containers and three particulate matter monitoring machines for the purpose. “We have already imported equipment for setting up the stations,” said Shankar Prasad Paudel, a senior divisional chemist at the department, adding that a German engineer would arrive next week to install the machines.

The three stations would be set up at Ratnapark of Kathmandu, Pulchock Engineering Campus, Lalitpur and Kathmandu University, Dhulikhel.

Paudel said the stations would monitor dust particles and four types of air pollutants and send the report to the central server in real time. Paudel said the data so collected would be automatically forwarded to the central server of National Information Technology Center and posted on the Department of Environment’s website.

Though air pollution monitoring began in Nepal since 2002, almost all the existing stations have become dysfunctional. The Danish government had installed seven air quality monitoring stations in the Valley in 2002.

These stations were handed over to the government in 2008. However, the government entrusted the Environment and Public Health Organisation with managing the stations since.

The stations were closed following a misunderstanding between the government and the organisation in 2009.

Director General at Department of Environment Ganesh Kumar Shrestha said the government has also decided to set up six other air quality monitoring stations in Khumaltar, Machchhegaun, Teku, Bhaktapur, Chandragiri and Kapan or Maharajgunj in the Kathmandu Valley very soon.

“Altogether we are planning to install 56 stations throughout the country,” he said, adding, “International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development and Kathmandu Sustainable Urban Transport Project have been supporting the department to procure equipment and to install them.”

To avoid disruptions in sending the data to the central server due to power cuts, the department has also been seeking support from various organisations to install solar power system.

According to the Environment Performance Index 2016, Nepal ranks 149 among 180 countries in terms of air quality. While countries around the world have taken stringent actions to improve air quality, Nepal has yet to take any concrete initiative.

Numbeo, a crowd-sourced global database, ranked Kathmandu as the third most polluted city in the world with a score of 96.66 out of 100, after Tetovo, Macedonia, and Cairo, Egypt in its Pollution Index 2016.

While Nepal’s national air pollution standard is 40 microgram per cubic meter, existing data show that the pollution levels in the Valley remains above 200 microgram per cubic meter.