Continuous Air Monitoring Station was inaugurated in Agrabad area in the Chittagong city on Friday.
The forest and environment minister, Hasan Mahmud, formally inaugurated the CAMS in the morning.
Addressing the inaugural ceremony, the minister said that conservation of environment was a big challenge. ‘Air is the most important element of environment and maintaining its standard quality is a vital task for conserving the environment,’ he said adding that it was necessary to know the continuous condition of the air to maintain the air quality.
He said the CAMS had been set up to have a clear idea of the air quality round the clock and round the year which would help formulating policy to control the air pollution.
A total of 11 CAMS labs had already been established in the major cities of the country and more labs would be set up in future to combat the air pollution, the minister informed.
He said the government had amended the Environment Law to make it time befitting. The government was also working to set up environment court in every district, he added.
Chaired by Nasir Uddin, joint secretary of Forest and Environment Ministry, the function was also addressed by MA Latif MP as special guest, Zafar Alam, director of Directorate of Environment, Chittagong, among others.
Zafar Alam said that the CAMS was set up under the project of Clean Air and Sustainable Environment jointly funded by the government and World Bank.
‘Air quality monitoring data is a key component to understand and to reduce air pollution.
Ambient air quality monitoring data provides measurement of concentrations of pollutants in the air at a specific place over a specified time. This provides valuable information about how much pollution in the air, where the air is most polluted, and some information about the types of air pollution,’ he said.
The CAMS would be able to generate information from the monitoring programme that could be used to undertake policy intervention and regulatory measures to reduce the pollution levels, the DoE director said adding that this would also enable public awareness on the air quality situation in most cities of Bangladesh.