IMPHAL, Feb 8 NNN: The two Vehicular Pollution Testing Centres (VPTCs) at Imphal are not functioning to the fullest owing to the inefficient enforcement by the State Government’s machineries and also lack of awareness among the people about the testing centres, according to official sources.
Although there are a total of 2, 24, 056 registered vehicles in Manipur now as per record maintained by Manipur Transport Department, the number of pollution tested vehicles is far less, the sources said.
Two VPTCs—one at Moirangkhom, MSRTC complex and one at Mantripukhri—were installed after the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways provided necessary equipments free of cost to the state Government. The VCT at Moirangkhom was installed in the year 2012 while the one at Mantripukhri was installed a decade ago.
The VPTCs equipments include one Exhaust Gas Analyzer for testing of petrol run vehicles and another Diesel Smoke Metre for testing diesel vehicles.
According to the official sources, permissible carbon-dioxide emission limit of petrol powered four- stroke vehicles is 3 percent per volume while that of two- stroke is 4.5 percent.
However, the permissible limit of Hatridge Smoke Unit (HSU) emission for diesel vehicles is 65 percent per volume.
Since 2012, a total of 300 petrol powered vehicles and 2000 diesel vehicles have been tested at the VPTC at Moirangkhom. During the testing, at least eight petrol vehicles and 100 diesel vehicles were found using beyond the permissible level, the sources said.
None of the vehicles, however, ever came back to the centre even though the authority had asked them for checking within a week.
Read more / Original news source: http://manipur-mail.com/pollution-testing-centres-not-functioning/
