Ghaziabad forum seeks CM's help over pollution problem

India Rejuvenation Initiative (IRI), a forum for probity in public life, has called for Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's intervention over massive air and water pollution in many villages in Ghaziabad.

In the letter to the chief minister, senior IRI member H.C. Pande said the problem has assumed acute dimension in around 50 villages of Ghaziabad.

During a recent visit of a team of IRI, the villagers told them about the pollution, Pande said.

The villagers said apart from large-scale damages to crops, they have also been suffering from various acute pollution-related ailments.

The villagers told the IRI team that discharge of sewage from Tronica City into canal has resulted in stench all around. As a result, farmers were were not able to work on their fields.

The distributed temperature sensing (DTS) level of Hindon river around villages Ghari, Siraura, Bhoopkheri, Bhanera, Aslatpur and Farrukhnagar has gone up dangerously, they said.

The rise in cases of cancer, heart attack, kidney diseases and continuous fever has become matter of concern and at least 50 percent of the population in the region is suffering from respiratory diseases.

The IRI team was told that at least 70 percent population has been taking medicines for one or another ailment.

Pande said the IRI has been writing to the chief minister because the officers of the local administration were not in a position to take effective measures to solve such enormous problem.

-- Indo-Asian News Service

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