Nearly 17,000 schools running under the three municipal corporations of Delhi were today closed in view of the heavy smog, the worst the national capital has witnessed in 17 years.
“All municipal schools under the three corporations were closed due to the heavy smog and pollution. The order for closure is only for today as of now. As per the situation, we may decide to close them later as well,” Leader of Opposition in SDMC, Subhash Arya said.
About 10 lakh students are enrolled in the schools administered by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) and East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC).
The decision was taken yesterday at a meeting of civic officials held in the wake of severe pollution Delhiites are reeling under.
Recently, the National Green Tribunal had pulled up the Centre and AAP government for “shifting blame” and not taking steps to tackle the alarming air pollution level in Delhi, saying what a “terrible” future are we giving to our children.
The national capital was facing the worst smog in 17 years, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) had said on Thursday, while asking the Delhi government to issue health alerts and convey that children should stay indoors as there was a state of health emergency due to peaking air pollution.
Peak level of respirable pollutants PM 2.5 and PM10 had also violated the safe limits by over 15 times at places like R K Puram. The prescribed standard of PM 2.5 is 60 micrograms per cubic metre, but it touched 955 in real-time during early morning hours.
Admitting that the enforcement of rules for tackling air pollution was “weak”, the Environment Ministry yesterday had asked states to “strictly” implement a host of measures, including checking spread of fly ash from Delhi’s Badarpur plant and shutting down of old brick kilns.