JALANDHAR
In a series of measures to check stubble burning in the upcoming Kharif season, the district administration has appointed 189 nodal officers and 54 cluster coordinators in Jalandhar to control the menace.
The Additional Deputy Commissioner (RD) Varinder Pal Singh Bajwa, while presiding over a meeting of the District Environment Committee, said that the Jalandhar administration had appointed these 243 officers to prevent stubble-burning incidents. He said that these officers had to share daily action-taken reports through a mobile application called ATR (Action Taken Report) developed by the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) and the Punjab Remote Sensing Centre (PRSC) after physical verification of stubble burning incidents. He said that PRSC would send them the latitude and longitude of the location, which would tell the exact location of the incident.
Bajwa said that the PPCB had already identified hotspots of the stubble burning and these details have been already shared with allied departments. He said that as per details, officers need to lay major focus on the Shahkot, Phillaur, and Nakodar villages. He said that SDMs of concerned sub-divisions would also closely monitor the functioning of nodal Officers and cluster coordinators.
ADC also asked the officials of the agriculture department and PPCB to form joint teams to ensure all brick kilns use 20 percent paddy stubble as fuel. Moreover, he told the Municipal Corporations/Councils to ensure treated water for sprinkling of water and irrigation activities. He also reviewed the functioning of the Solid waste management program including door-to-door collection, waste segregation, and others.
Prominent amongst those present on the occasion included Joint MC Commissioner Puneet Sharma, Chief Agriculture Officer Dr Jaswant Rai, Executive Engineer PPCB Sandeep Kumar, and
others.