MoEF Minister Shajahan Siraj confirmed the decision and told The Daily Star that the Department of Environment (DoE) is now drafting an elaborate guideline for containing noise pollution in the city, which has reached an unbearable level and needs to be addressed immediately.

"We shall finalise the draft within the next two weeks and introduce the new laws as soon as possible," said Siraj.

The minister said that in addition to hydraulic horns, nowadays almost all private vehicles are using extremely powerful double horns creating an atmosphere of deafening noise. Vehicle owners would be asked to remove the additional horns and use a single unit horn, which emits sound that conforms to the decibel standard of the country.

"We shall also focus on all other sources of noise including that of loudspeakers used indiscriminately in thousands of mosques in the city," he said.

DoE sources said that they are working on the draft considering sources of noise in the city. A source said thousands of mosques in the city are indiscriminately using loudspeakers without respect to the environment. For instance, in one small area if there are four mosques, all of them are unnecessarily using powerful loudspeakers at every prayer time.

"Every mosque covers an area, so the mosque is required to let the people of that particular area know about the prayer time. It is unnecessary to blow a set of deafening loudspeakers," said a DoE source.

With no regulation on use of horns and loudspeakers, Dhaka is one of the noisiest cities in the world. According to experts, the noise level in the city's residential, commercial and industrial areas is many times higher than it should be. To worsen the problem, thousands of construction sites and workshops defy time restrictions for works and continue working even during nighttime. The whole situation is exposing the innocent city dwellers, particularly children, to great health hazards.

"Most people living in the city for long time suffer from one or other sort of hearing impairment due to extreme noise," said a specialist doctor of the DMCH.

Moreover, noise pollution is also causing blood pressure and heart ailments, anxiety, gastrointestinal diseases and various other mental and physical disorders.

The owner of a driving school at Dhanmondi said that they did not have any guideline over use of horns. Most driving schools from where hundreds of unemployed youths learn driving follow part of a driving manual that was introduced in the 1950s, which clearly asks the driver to blow horn at every intersection.

"We are now teaching our students to blow horn at every intersection, we are not aware of noise pollution caused by the horns," said an instructor at a reputed driving school requesting anonymity.

The instructor blamed pedestrians and rickshaw pullers for causing hazards on the roads, which prompt the drivers to blow horns at will.

"If the level of sound is reduced by removing extra horns situation might improve," said the instructor.