New Delhi (AFP)
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, visiting an Indian capital asphyxiated by extreme pollution, has pledged a billion euros over five years for green transport in India, and urged New Delhi to fight a plague responsible for hundreds of thousands of premature deaths.
The German Chancellor arrived Thursday night for an economic visit to a New Delhi "in a state of health emergency" due to a peak of air pollution fueled by agricultural burns.
Germany will commit up to one billion euros for green transport projects in Indian cities over the next five years, the Chancellor promised in a speech reported by the Indian press on Saturday. "These diesel buses need to be replaced by electric buses, and anyone who has felt the pollution in Delhi has very good arguments to advocate for this replacement," said Merkel, one of the first foreign officials to speak out. publicly about the scourge of pollution in India.
Merkel attended a parade on Friday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Neither of the two leaders wore masks despite the smog's intensity and sanitary warnings.
The air quality has deteriorated sharply this week in the megacity of twenty million inhabitants, pushing a body of pollution control to qualify Friday the situation of "state of health emergency" which "will have consequences sanitary conditions harmful to all, especially our children ".
Schools and building sites were closed until Tuesday. Firecrackers are forbidden for the whole winter.
Every year at the beginning of winter, a combination of natural factors (cold, weak winds ...) and humans (agricultural burns, industrial and automotive emissions, fires to heat up ...) transforms New Delhi into a "gas chamber" ", an expression frequently used by its leaders.
In anticipation of the pollution season, New Delhi had banned the use of diesel generators and will apply, from November 4 to 15, alternating traffic. The local government also announced last month that it would distribute 5 million protective masks to schoolchildren.
In 2017, air pollution caused 1.2 million premature deaths in India, according to a study published last year in the scientific journal The Lancet.
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