Environmental damage: SC wants to know what govt has done about pollution

Court seeks reports from institutions about steps for pollution control.


Our Correspondent August 29, 2012

KARACHI: The Supreme Court has ordered all civic and environmental agencies to file reports about what they have done to control environmental pollution.

On Tuesday, the counsel for the Sindh Industrial Trading Estate (SITE) asked for more time to comment. Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali and Justice Amir Hani Muslim adjourned the hearing to an unspecified date

The petitioners, all concerned citizens, have demanded that the relevant agencies and institutions tell the court what steps they have been taken to control environmental pollution. One of the petitioners, Vice Admiral (ret’d) Ahmed Tasneem, had filed a human rights case on pollution and the discharge of effluent in the Karachi harbour area.

The other petition, known as the Tanvir Arif case, drew the court’s attention towards the dumping of hazardous and toxic pesticides in SITE while the third one relates to environmental pollution in the coastal area as poisoned industrial waste material is dumped into the sea by different factories.

The fourth case originated from a suo motu notice on a complaint by a man named Gul Zaib, a resident of  Abidabad in SITE, over the death and disability of children caused by some deadly chemical waste in a vacant  plot in that area.

At least three boys were burnt when they entered an open plot to find a ball. The children were trapped in the toxic waste dumped there. One boy was left disabled as his both feet and hands were burnt badly.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 29th, 2012.

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