Director-general’s post still vacant at Pak-EPA; heads of Zoological Survey and GCISC held as additional charges.
The climate change ministry affairs are being run on an ad-hoc basis with senior posts at its allied departments either vacant or being additionally held by officials from unrelated fields to the detriment of solving current environmental issues.
Pak-Environmental Protection Agency (Pak-EPA) Director-General (DG) Dr Muhammad Khurshid Khan has recently been transferred to Sri Lanka as South Asia Co-operative Environment Programme (SACEP) head.
The ministry has yet to appoint his replacement. This is not only affecting the day-to-day affairs of the agency but also giving a free hand to violators to further degrade the environment in the capital city.
The headless agency was unable to issue an environmental protection order to the Capital Development Authority (CDA) at the beginning of last month for chopping trees and initiating work on the Islamabad Expressway expansion project, without conducting a proper Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) beforehand.
“At the Pak-EPA, only the DG has the power to issue environmental protection orders against violators of section 12 of Pakistan’s Environmental Ordinance”, a source at the agency told The Express Tribune on condition of anonymity.
He said the agency had sent the case of CDA violations in connection with the expansion project, since the secretary of the ministry also has powers to initiate action against section 12 violators.
“Though the CDA submitted an environmental impact assessment report with Pak-EPA just three days back, prepared by the project’s consultants Nespak or National Engineering Services Pakistan, it is still only a draft and not a comprehensive environmental impact study”, environmentalist Bilal Haq said. Haq, who represents Green Islamabad, a non-government organisation, added that an EIA should be submitted before the start of any project, and that CDA did so after cutting down most of the trees along the expressway and Kachnar Park in Sector I-8.
Another important department, the Zoological Survey of Pakistan (ZSP), has also been operating without a permanent head for a long period of time. Assistant Inspector-General, Forest, Aurangzeb Awan, has been given the addition charge of running the day-to-day affairs of the ZSP.
Syed Mahmood Nasir, Inspector General Forests, has been given the additional charge of Executive Director for The Global Change Impact Studies Centre (GCISC), the research arm of the ministry. The GCISC is dedicated to national level research and development, as well as capacity building, policy analysis, information dissemination and assistance to planners and policymakers on issues related to past and projected future climatic changes in Pakistan. The centre also assesses the likely impact of climate change on key socio-economic sectors such as water, food agriculture, energy, forestry, health, and ecology and recommends adaptation and mitigation measures. The GCISC has been working without a head since the retirement of Dr Ashfaq Ahmad.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 7th, 2015.
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