Tribune News Service
Amritsar, August 26
Experts have called upon members of the Amritsar Brick-Kiln Owners’ Association to adopt new environment-friendly technology to reduce emissions in the fragile environment.
Addressing brick-kiln owners, Pritpal Singh, senior engineer, Punjab State Council for Science and Technology (PSCST), said, “The brick technology depends generally on the scale of production, availability of soil and fuel, demand, market conditions and also on the enforcement of law for shifting from one technology to the other. Brick production usually takes place in units using century-old production methods, involving manual and inefficient methods of clay preparation, hand moulding and firing.” Since the drying and firing is done in the open, the brick cannot be dried and fired during the rainy season, hence is mostly seasonal and operating from six to eight months, he added.
He elaborated that number of measures and techniques were evolved for improvement. Punjab Pollution Control Board Chief Engineer GS Majithia and Executive Engineer Harpal Singh also stressed on adoption of latest environment-friendly technologies.