Port Blair, Oct18: Diwali is the Festival of Lights, it commemorates the fight of good over evil, of the triumph of light over darkness. Port Blair, Oct18: Diwali is the Festival of Lights, it commemorates the fight of good over evil, of the triumph of light over darkness. During the celebration, with the use of firecrackers and other illuminating fireworks, not only effects the human health also leads to other associated problems. It has been observed that, during the festive season, air becomes filled with smoke from the firecrackers which add to breathing difficulties and the sound emitted from the crackers creates noise pollution and poses hearing threat to the human as well as animals.After the Diwali celebrations, it is observed that the roads, junctions, streets and other walk ways, are dirty&filled with huge garbage of fire crackers, which increase the garbage load on the PBMC.On this auspicious occasion, the Port Blair Municipal Council (PBMC) wishes and appeals to every individuals/ general public to celebrate with a pollution and accident free Diwali by extending small contribution towards making the Festival of light with harmony and less pollution such as:1. Encourage to use oil lamps.2. Avoid crackers that produce excessive noise or smoke.3. Do not light crackers between 10 PM and 6 AM and follow the Police regulations & norms.4. Discard used fireworks in a bucket of water. In this manner you can avoid people from stepping on to and hurting their feet from used fireworks, which are thrown on the ground.5. Do not light crackers around hospitals, schools etc. in any silence zones.6. Keep water and sand in buckets to extinguish accidental fire. 7. Clean garbage at your surrounding area at very next day and store it separately with other wastes and hand it over to the PBMC’s sanitary worker.PBMC request islanders to pledge to minimize the crackers for smoke free and litter free Diwali.
