Petition hearing: LHC orders functional environmental lab

Directs Environmental Protection Agency chief to report within one month

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court has directed the Environmental Protection Agency to ensure its central environmental laboratory is made functional within three months.

On Thursday, LHC Chief Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah also ordered the EPA director-general and the Punjab chief secretary submit a compliance report after a month.

The court issued the order on a petition seeking the functionality of the central laboratory which is mandatory under the law.

EPA Director-General Javed Iqbal submitted that an amount of Rs158 million had been allocated for the lab and the PC-1 of the plan had also been prepared. The lab would be made functional on the previous orders of the court, he added.



Petitioners Zubair Niazi and Muhammad Naeem submitted the enforcement of environmental laws had been adversely affected although the federal government had ratified the Paris Agreement in 1992 and then again in 2015 to curb emissions.

Their counsel Sheraz Zaka contended Lahore was becoming one of the most polluted cities in the country and that public functionaries had been negligent of their duties as the environmental protection agency had been functioning without a central laboratory.

He also voiced concerns that the fundamental rights of citizens for having a clean environment were at stake.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 21^st, 2016.