India: New Delhi closes schools for a week due to pollution

Authorities in New Delhi on Saturday ordered, after an emergency meeting, the closure of schools for a week, due to air pollution which has reached alarming levels in recent days.

Civil servants must telecommute, and private companies have been urged to do so as much as possible.

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India: the river that crosses New Delhi covered in toxic moss

"From Monday, schools will be closed so that children do not have to breathe polluted air," Chief Minister of the Indian capital Arvind Kejriwal told reporters.

Construction work will be stopped for four days, from Sunday, to stop polluting emissions from outdoor sites.

A city suffocating from pollution

Populated by 20 million inhabitants, the Indian capital is the most polluted in the world according to a report by the Swiss organization IQAir published in 2020, because of its factories, its traffic and agricultural fires lit every winter.

Towers, railways, roads, the entire city is covered with a thick cloud of pollution from which the inhabitants try to protect themselves with the help of masks.

A woman crosses a railway in New Delhi, India, as pollution blankets the capital.

(REUTERS / Anushree Fadnavis) REUTERS

Waste incineration continues despite everything

Pollution levels in New Delhi were also in the "severe" zone on Friday, prompting the Central Pollution Control Board to issue an imminent health alert.

The incineration of agricultural waste in states neighboring New Delhi continues despite a Supreme Court ban.

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This environmental crisis in the Indian capital comes at the time when the COP26 in Glasgow is due to close, extended by one day because of the difficulties of the participating countries to reach an agreement on financial assistance to be given to poor countries, which are particularly affected by the effects of global warming, and on the phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies.