‘Effective government regulations can solve smog problem’

Filmmakers from Kyrgyzstan highlight issues faced by world’s most polluted cities, including Lahore

LAHORE:

One of the main sources of air pollution is poverty, and effective government policies could easily resolve the problem, said two filmmakers from Kyrgyzstan. Iskender Aliev and Bermet Borubaeva, the filmmakers, have highlighted in their film on Bishkek -– one of the greenest cities of the region -– some basic issues which they believed contributed to air pollution in Bishkek and other polluted cities of the world, including Lahore. In the documentary, the experts said,

“When smog forms, it stays in the city for a long time because urban plans have been violated.” Express TV telecasts every Sunday documentaries on various burning issues in the series titled ‘Voices from the Roof of the World’. O n S u n d ay, t h e documentary, “Bishkek Smog”, highlighted a number of issues Bishkek’s population was facing due to constant smog. “Lahore and Bishkek are [almost] same in air pollution especially in the winter,” said Borubaeva. She said that according to the experts, people in both cities used very low quality fuel.

“It’s an environmental catastrophe for not using good quality oil products,” she said. Aliev said that the problem was more complicated than what the people thought. “The roots of the problem are with the social and economic situations,” he added. He said that he had tried to portray the same in the documentary. He said he was not aware of the overall situation of smog in Pakistan. But, he added, they [the residents] should reduce the consumption of coal, make their houses heat insulated and use the right stoves. The producers of the documentary said that the main source of pollution was poverty as well as ineffective government regulations.

“People in Bishkek are so poor,” Borubaeva pointed out. “They usually use a lot of coal. There is a lot of corruption in city regulation,” she added. They were of the opinion that the government could resolve the issue of air pollution. “The government is responsible for clean environment, and it’s written in [our] Constitution,” Borubaeve said. “We have air quality standard,” she said. She also said that “the corrupt people in the system” allowed people to build houses while violating the rules for protecting the environment. “All ecology and environment in Bishkek has collapsed,” she said.

When it was pointed out to Borubaeve that people in Lahore and in the rest of the country burnt trash, she said that the same thing was being done by the residents in Bishkek. “Alternative energy has not been developed. People are very poor, and they burn coal. They burn trash and also some textile leftovers,” she added.