ALMATY. KAZINFORM One of the main sources of air pollution in Almaty comes from vehicle exhaust pipes, city mayor Yerbolat Dossayev said at the extraordinary meeting of the municipal maslikhat today, Kazinform reports.
Dossayev says that 30% of emissions are responsible for exhaust fumes from public transport.
“Unfortunately, of the 250,000 vehicles, sometimes 300,000, that enter the city, 80% do not comply with any environmental standards. We participated in a government meeting and after the Prime Minister’s trip we agreed on a joint work of the Ministry of Ecology, the administration of Almaty and maslikhat to strengthen the control of the quality of fuel and lubricants and the technical inspection of vehicles “said the mayor.
“One of the measures offered was to restrict the entry of vehicles into the city. But I said that we must prepare for this measure. The daytime population of Almaty is 2 million 700 thousand people, 500,000. Some are working in Almaty”, he stressed.
He criticized the poorly developed public transport and poor communication with the agglomeration of Almaty.
“For this reason, we cannot restrict the entry of transport. If we complete the construction projects of multimodal transport stations, this will allow us to improve the quality of public transport”, he said.
Deputy Mayor Askar Amrin added that the city administration planned to develop high-speed transport stations and multimodal transport in the city’s borders.
About 250,000 vehicles enter Almaty daily and 50,000 of them remain in the city. This daily migration also contributes to air pollution. Therefore, the implementation of our project to create four multimodal transport stations will reduce the number of vehicles entering Almaty from 250,000 to 130,000 and eliminate the 1,500-2,000 tons of annual emissions we breathe,” Amrin stressed.
Other sources of air pollution include emissions from coal-fired power plants and industrial enterprises, as well as insufficient city gasification.
So far, Almaty has been gasified by almost 96%.
