City chokes on toxic smog

LAHORE:

Closure of schools in the provincial capital to control smog has not worked since the city remains at the top of the list of the most polluted cities of the world.

The last two days proved to be worse since pollution hit the roof, making the city replace New Delhi as the most highly polluted city in the world.

No wonder then that people are suffering from various pulmonary diseases.

On the other hand, parents and teachers are demanding of the provincial government to announce early winter vacations to at least prevent the schoolchildren from contracting diseases caused by the worst-ever onslaught of smog the city has witnessed.

The Punjab government and its Environment Protection Department appear to be helpless in controlling the situation. The situation has bamboozled the government and its departments. They have been struggling for the last two months to handle air pollution but in vain.

According to the EPD officials, department had been continuously struggling to control the situation.

Earlier this month, the Punjab government, following the orders of the Lahore High Court, had imposed a restriction on all schools of the city to observe three holidays a week with the aim of controlling smog as people were suffering due to pollution-related diseases.

A record number of people were seen at the OPDs of Lahore’s hospitals where doctors scrambled to deal with the patients who had contracted various pollution-related diseases.

It was being anticipated that after closure of the schools the ratio of air quality in Lahore would improve, but this decision did not give the desired results. The week in Lahore started with a thick layer of smog looming the sky and descending on some of the most densely populated areas of Lahore.

Not only Lahore, but many other big cities of the Punjab, including Multan, Bahawalpur, Faisalabad, Gujranwala and Rawalpindi, were facing the worst kind of air pollution at the moment, said Professor Dr Munawar Sabir of the University of the Punjab.

Although there was a long-term plan to tackle the current wave of pollution, yet at the moment the province only needed rain to rid the people of their miseries, he said.

“There is nothing else we can do except one thing,” said Dr Sabir.

The thing to be done was to control pollution through cutting down the number of vehicles on the roads and closure of thousands of small factories in many areas of the city, opined Dr Sabir.

“We should take the situation as our fate. We are on the verge of destruction, and it’s high time our government took some proactive steps to handle air pollution,” said the professor.

Meanwhile, the Secretary of Environment, Usman Khan, said he didn’t know about the ranking of the worst polluted cities in the world since the AQI system was out of order.

However, one thing was crystal clear: the biggest reason of pollution in Lahore was the vehicles, he said. According to an estimate, 43 percent of pollution was due to vehicles, and if we failed in controlling the vehicles plying the roads of the city then the ratio of pollution would increase, warned the secretary.

On the other hand, the Secretary-General of the Punjab Teachers Union, Rana Liaqat Ali, said that 25 percent of schoolchildren were suffering from smog-related diseases and an equal number of teachers as well.

She said it pained everyone who saw the students’ health deteriorate even though everyone had been following the policy of wearing masks.

Sajida Begum, a schoolteacher, demanded of the government to immediately announce winter vacations until rain came so that the kids and teachers got some kind of relief as in the current situation, it was impossible for the teachers to go on with their academic activities.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 20^th, 2022.