Authority and responsibility: Environment protection standards ‘abysmal’

EPA director says delinquent officials exacerbated environmental degradation.

LAHORE:

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Director Muhammad Tauqeer Ahmad Qureshi revealed on Thursday that the agency’s laboratory tests were unreliable. He said delinquent officials had exacerbated environmental degradation during the tenure of the former Environmental Protection Department Secretary Muhammad Anwar Rasheed.

Challenging four inquiries (three departmental and one by Anti Corruption Establishment) against him before Lahore High Court (LHC) Qureshi said that the inquiries had been initiated by the former secretary who is now the Anti-Corruption Establishment director general.

Qureshi said he had informed the secretary that EPA laboratories were inoperative and incompetent people were working there. He said that none of the results of environmental samples were reliable. Qureshi said the agency had been submitting fake reports at courts.

He said the implementation of Administrative Penalty Rules (APR) was replete with irregularities. Qureshi said the agency had circumvented the judicial process. Qureshi said the deliberate computing of pollution loads based on erroneous results by the EPA had caused huge losses to the public exchequer.

He said industrial units in Lahore had been discharging untreated wastewater with the assistance of the delinquent agency officials. Qureshi said this had added toxic substances to groundwater and had disturbed the aquifer’s geochemistry.  He said the Faisalabad aquifer had been destroyed and rendered unfit for human consumption. Qureshi said the situation in Lahore was alarming as groundwater was the only water source in the city. He said its formations contained disturbing concentrations of arsenic and fluoride that put citizens’ lives in peril.

Qureshi said site inspection reports (SIRs) were manipulated and facts had been deliberately removed from them to favour polluters. He said corrupt agency officials were on the payroll of industrial units. Qureshi said no-objection certificate (NOC) cancellation notices were issued to factories to extort money. He said the complaint record against units causing pollution had been manipulated to win favour from industrial units.

The director said the former secretary had been nursing a grudge against him after he had informed him of the irregularities. Qureshi said he had initiated three inquires to victimise him. He said he had been suspended on May 15, 2014, but had been restored three months later. Qureshi said Rasheed had taken the matter of his suspension to Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif. Qureshi said he was not authorised to do this. He said the former secretary had taken these initiatives to punish him for revealing irregularities in the agency.

Qureshi said he had suggested the constitution of a committee to probe the allegations of corruption and inefficiency in the EPA in the interest of the public. He suggested that a high-level autonomous task force should be constituted to carry out an independent and thorough survey across the province including Lahore, Gujranwala and Faisalabad to identify units discharging untreated wastewater.

He asked the court to stop Rasheed from passing any order against him till the completion of the departmental probe. Qureshi asked the court to direct the chief secretary to constitute a committee to carry out a departmental inquiry against the former secretary.  Rasheed told The Express Tribune that he would not comment before filing his reply as the matter was sub judice.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 23^rd, 2015.