Beijing's ability to meet its target of acceptable air quality for the 2008 Olympic Games has been questioned after the capital recorded its most polluted month in years, Xinhua said yesterday.
There were only 11 days with blue sky in Beijing in April, the worst record in the past five years, the report said. Clear sky could only be seen on 51 days, or 56 per cent, of the first four months of the year.
To live up to Beijing's goal of having acceptable air quality on at least 238 days a year - or 63 per cent of the time - the city will need to see 22 days of blue sky in each of the remaining seven months of the year. This month had met the minimum requirement of 22 days, the report said.
'Although there was some improvement in the month of May, it doesn't look optimistic that we can achieve the goal this year,' Xinhua quoted Du Shaozhong, a deputy director of the Beijing Environment Protection Bureau, as saying.
More than 200,000 members of various Beijing car clubs have called for a no-car day to be introduced at least once a month. The city has about 2.6 million vehicles on its roads.
The government has come up with a range of measures in a desperate attempt to clean up the smog-plagued capital for the Olympic. It has replaced 4,000 old buses and 30,000 cabs this year.