The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) host­ed a sen­si­ti­sa­tion ses­sion on the Air Pol­lu­tion Rules (APR), 2014, tar­get­ing stake­hold­ers in­volved in Sched­ule 3, Des­ig­nat­ed Ac­tiv­i­ty 7 – Health Sec­tor: Cre­ma­to­ri­ums and Med­ical Waste In­cin­er­a­tion.

The ses­sion fo­cused on key ar­eas of the APR, 2014, in­clud­ing the Source Emit­ter Reg­is­tra­tion process, stack emis­sions test­ing, and re­port­ing re­quire­ments.

Twen­ty-three rep­re­sen­ta­tives from twelve fa­cil­i­ties at­tend­ed the ses­sion. Par­tic­i­pants in­clud­ed stake­hold­ers from the Med­ical Waste In­cin­er­a­tion and Cre­ma­to­ri­um Sec­tor, the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice – Law Re­form Com­mis­sion.

EMA man­ag­er, Vid­jaya Ramkha­lawan, de­liv­ered the keynote ad­dress. Ramkha­lawan stat­ed that cre­ma­to­ri­ums and med­ical waste in­cin­er­a­tion ser­vices hold sig­nif­i­cant re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. Ramkha­lawan added that in­creased pub­lic aware­ness on en­vi­ron­men­tal mat­ters places fur­ther pres­sure on the sec­tor to man­age emis­sions re­spon­si­bly.

The EMA said the ses­sion aimed to strength­en un­der­stand­ing of the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work gov­ern­ing air emis­sions and pol­lu­tion con­trol in these sec­tors.

The Au­thor­i­ty added that this stake­hold­er en­gage­ment forms part of na­tion­al ef­forts to meet the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals and the Na­tion­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy, 2018.

The EMA reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to work­ing with stake­hold­ers across sec­tors to pro­mote com­pli­ance and ac­count­abil­i­ty in en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion.