Head in the sand: Govt looks the other way as pollution cases pile up

Punjab yet to make new law to allow environmental tribunal to resume functioning.

LAHORE:

The Punjab government’s failure to pass a new environmental law has crippled the environmental regulator’s ability to punish polluting industries and led to a rising backlog at the environmental tribunal.

By the end of January, the number of cases pending with the tribunal stood at 1,135, according to figures maintained by the Environmental Protection Department. The tribunal has been without a head since last July, following the devolution of environmental issues as a provincial subject.

The tribunal was previously constituted under the Pakistan Environment Protection Act, which is now being reframed as the Punjab Environment Protection Act (PEPA). However, the provincial law minister and the incoming provincial environment minister are not even aware of the status of the bill.

Meanwhile, the cases pending at the tribunal are piling up. A total of 240 cases against tanneries accused of contaminating groundwater with chemical toxins in Sialkot were sent to the tribunal in January.

An EPD officer estimated that 50 to 60 cases are sent to the tribunal every month. “January was a very busy month because of the tanneries in Sialkot,” he said.

Up to the end of 2011, 895 cases had piled up with the tribunal, against tanneries, poultry farms, rice mills, textile dyeing units, steel re-rolling units, lubricant manufacturers, stone crushers, marble factories, paper manufacturers and housing schemes across Punjab.

‘No, we can’t’

The new head can only be appointed by the chief minister once the bill is passed into law, said EPD Director General Maqsood Ahmed Lak. “We are helpless in the absence of a law,” he said.

In December, a draft bill was referred to the Punjab Assembly standing committee on environmental issues, which presented its report in the house on January 25. Lawmakers are yet to debate or approve the bill, according to the Punjab Assembly website as well as Lak.

Once the bill is passed by the assembly it will be sent to the governor, who will likely take about a month to review and approve it, said Lak. He estimated that the legislative process would take at least three months.

Chaudhary Khalil, the legal member of the tribunal, said that he had written to several ministers to push for quick approval of the bill so a chairman could be appointed, but to no avail.

“I continue to investigate the technical aspects of the cases that are sent to the tribunal, but it has become a dead-end job. Even if I investigate and find lots of evidence, there is no point because there isn’t a judge to take a decision,” he said.

Asked why it was taking so long to approve the bill so the tribunal could become functional again, Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said that the assembly had passed the bill but the governor had rejected it. When it was pointed out to him that the PEPA was not among a raft of bills recently passed by the assembly and then rejected by the governor, Sanaullah said that he was unaware of the status of the bill.

Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif was in charge of the environment portfolio in the Punjab cabinet until last week, when his office announced that he was giving it up along with seven other portfolios. His special adviser Manshaullah Butt was tasked with looking after the portfolio and will take charge as environment minister from today, said Butt’s public relations officer. Asked about the bill, the PRO said the minister knew nothing about it.

Mian Ejaz Majeed, assistant director (legal) at the EPD, said inspectors could deal with violations under Section 146 (d) of the Punjab Local Government Ordinance 2002, which permitted them to impose fines and initiate prosecutions in cases of serious threats to public health.

 Health hazards

EPD Inspector Yasir Gul told The Tribune about some of the environmental and public health hazards posed by these industries. Poultry farms, he said, often dump waste in ditches, leading to contamination of the groundwater supply.

According to EPD guidelines, poultry farms should be at least two kilometres from residential areas and each shed be at least a kilometre distance from another. “We send poultry farm cases to the tribunal when they have been set up in a residential area,” he said.

Untreated industrial waste from paper mills and textile units is often disposed of directly into sewage drains, which ultimately flows into the rivers. They are often set up without a no-objection certificate from the EPD.

Six cases are against lubricant shops that sold low-quality oil, Gul said. “The lubricant is popular among rickshaw and Qing Qi drivers because of its low cost. But it gives off smoke contaminated with pollutants in excess of the National Environment Quality Standards,” he said.

Rice mills and stone crushing units result in high levels of dust in the atmosphere, which can give rise to lung infections among people living nearby.

Two cases remain pending at the tribunal from 2004, seven from 2006, ten from 2007, 33 from 2008, and 70 from 2009.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 9^th, 2012.