Rwanda Motors has embarked on activities and strategies geared at environmental protection. According to Dario Simbizi, the Commercial Director, this is part of the company’s corporate environmental responsibility and an avenue to lessen the damage inflicted on the environment, by fumes from cars. “As a measure of curbing fume emissions, we have stocked smaller turbo engines that absorb and re-inject the fumes back into the engine. It’s a method employed worldwide for the same purpose and we believe it works,” said Simbizi at his offices. He further explained that the fact that they only sell new cars as opposed to old ones known for emitting a lot of dangerous fumes should not be overlooked. He, however, expressed misgivings about the current guidelines and laws followed in designing specifications to guide them. “The laws in place to guide automobile companies are very old. They do not consider the recent technological trends which have come in place to curb the problem of fume emissions,” he said. He also expressed optimism that since the Rwanda Bureau of Standards makes its specifications in consideration to recent world trends. ”It will endorse the use of smaller engine turbos,” he said of the bureau. On the same case, Simbizi added that they have also introduced motor cycles with four-stroke engines, saying that this will go an extra mile in controlling dangerous fume emissions. As a move to extend its responsibility in environment protection, Rwanda Motors also participated in the on going tree planting week by planting five hectares of trees in Gasabo district. Recently, the Rwanda Environment Management Authority and other environmental activists came out strong condemning the blatant reluctance of automobile companies and industries in finding measures of curbing fume emissions that damage the ozone layer. Ends
