Tribunal admits appeal against EPD report

Three members of Punjab Environmental Tribunal will hear appeal on September 11

RAWALPINDI:

The Punjab Environmental Tribunal has admitted for hearing an appeal of 25 citizens, including lawyers, against the report of a public hearing committee, declaring the act to establish a 1200-kanal landfill site for dumping the waste of Islamabad district at Losar area of Rawalpindi, as ‘environment friendly’.

The appeal will be heard by the three members of the Punjab Environmental Tribunal on September 11 for which notices have also been issued.

The development comes a fortnight after the residents of Losar village vowed to embark on a protest campaign as the city administration continued to dilly-dally on their demands regarding the Losar landfill site.

The residents have long protested against the dumping site, initially earmarked for waste from Rawalpindi, which was now being used as a dumping site by Islamabad as well as the nearby cantonment and factories.

Fayyaz Shah, Muhammad Asif, and others have argued in their appeals that Losar, Rawat has served as the Rawalpindi district’s garbage dumping site for the past 12 years.

“At this location, now the rubbish from the entire Islamabad district is also being dumped. Since Islamabad is a separate district with a sizable amount of territory, Rawalpindi or any other district cannot serve as its garbage dumping site,” the appeal argued.

“With this new dumping ground, a total of 1,800 kanals of valuable land in our area will not only become a garbage dumping ground, but the spread of chronic diseases, including cancer, tuberculosis, nose, ear, throat, stomach, eye and skin ailments, will also increase throughout the area,” it said. “The groundwater will become more toxic. No one can sleep here at night because of the strong stench,” it added.

“Despite strong verbal and written protests by the citizens, the public hearing committee of the Punjab Environment Protection Department (EPD) declared the project environment-friendly due to political and administrative pressures,” it lamented.

“In addition to Rawalpindi, all the solid waste of Islamabad will also be dumped here and harm our generation,” the appellants said and demanded that the report should be declared null and void and the Islamabad administration should be directed to build a separate dumping ground in its area.

The construction of the new dumping ground for Islamabad will also lead to the shutting down of 15 brick kilns in Losar and nearby villages. Zigzag technology had been installed in these brick kilns at a cost of millions of rupees a year ago. The closure of these brick kilns will increase the prices of bricks and render thousands of workers jobless.

The public hearing report of the EPD had met with extreme anger and discontent by the locals who while rejecting it outright, challenged it in the Environmental Protection Tribunal.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, September 7^th, 2023.