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The Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) is setting up an asset management system to ensure the optimal performance of the stations monitoring South Africa’s air quality, Environmental Affairs Deputy Minister Barbara Thomson said on Monday.
According to the recently released 2014 State of the Air Report, many of the 112 State-owned air-quality monitoring stations throughout the country were not fully operational or operated below certain minimum requirements.
“These monitoring stations are important tools that allow us to make a proper analysis of air quality levels in our country and identify priority areas for intervention,” she explained.
The stations collated and reported data to the South African Air Quality Information System to enable the effective identification of problem areas and the implementation of air pollution mitigation measures.
“It is of vital importance that they become fully operational. We are planning to take this matter up at the appropriate intergovernmental forum,” Thomson averred.
This emerged after the 2014 State of the Air Report, while showing a national improvement in air quality, revealed that no significant gains had been made in improving the air quality in priority areas.
“The implication of this is that communities residing in air pollution hotspots do not yet enjoy their constitutional right to air that is not harmful to their health and wellbeing,” Thomson explained.
The DEA vowed to focus on the high-pollution regions, seeking innovative solutions to ensure compliance, including the installation of air quality index billboards to report the state of air quality “live” to keep residents informed.