Govt. School classrooms will be getting Air Purifiers

As Delhi continues to be suffocated by hazardous pollution levels, the government has taken a progressive steps to protect students by installing air purifiers in 10,000 classrooms in government schools. Tenders for Phase 1 were made available last Friday by Education Minister Ashish Sood, who has also disclosed plans to expand this project to all government schools over time. 

Phase 1 will provide air purifiers for 10,000 classrooms. Sood also informed us, “In the future, we will add air purifiers to all government schools”.

 "Children typically spend between five to six hours in school each day – which means they are at high risks of being adversely affected by air pollution,” continued Sood. “There are many harmful effects of long-term exposure to poor-quality air on children’s health. Experts believe that prolonged exposures to pollutants like these negatively impact their lung development, immune function, concentration and ability to learn. Because Air Quality Index (AQI) reading have repeatedly placed into either Extremely Poor or Severely Hazardous levels, schools have had to switch classes to virtual formats recently.

The minister further stated that there are roughly 38,000 classrooms that are provided through the government's main and subsidized program of Delhi. Although there has been no announcement about the timetables for installing lights in all of these classrooms, the plan is to progressively roll out this implementation with funding from the environment cess. 

"This isn't about promoting anything. It's about making sure that we can protect our children through administrative means," Sood stated.