Four months and counting: Environment body remains dormant

No chairman, no work at Punjab Environment Tribunal.

ISLAMABAD:

The Punjab Environment Tribunal (PET) has been lying dormant for the past four months. With no chairman, thousands of cases have kept on piling and gathering dust.

Sources in the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (Pak-EPA) told The Express Tribune that due to absence of chairman many cases are also pending.

The former chairman of the tribunal, Khwaja Muhammad Afzal, retired on June 30. The tribunal has received several new cases after that as well which along with the old ones have been put on the back burner.

An official from the body put the number of pending complaints with the PET at 1,500.

“As many as 1,000 cases were pending including old ones from the Punjab province. Around 500 new cases have been registered with the tribunal in the past four months,” he said.

During Afzal’s two-year term, 300 cases were decided.

He further said that 307 cases related to Murree Tehsil were registered since October, 2010. Only 84 of them were disposed of while 223 cases are still pending.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 23^rd, 2011.