June 12, 2003	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 11, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, June 11: The environment ministry has approved a project of establishing a Monitoring Laboratory Network (MLN) throughout the country to collect data on environment conditions, official sources told Dawn.

The project aims at developing technical capacity needed to support the environmental monitoring system in the country followed by adequate measures to control pollution, they said.

The sources said with the setting up of monitoring laboratories in major cities of the country, the ministry would be able to grasp the present state pollution levels in different areas of Pakistan.

The objective behind setting up monitoring laboratories is to secure scientific knowledge needed to take administrative measures for improving the deteriorating water and air quality.

It will further ensure the effective operations of the regional Pakistan Environmental Protection Agencies (Pepa) as well as their monitoring and protection functions. The sources said so far in the country there was a dearth of exact data to compare and analyze with the Environmental Quality and Emission Standards, hence the MLN would help solve this problem.

Under the long-term objectives of this project, the ministry will later set up new environmental standards and regulations for emissions to be followed in the country. They said the monitoring data would contribute to define the priority of provisions and observations for pollution levels, be it air or water.

With the availability of monitoring data, the ministry will be able to compare the country’s pollution levels with other countries, and will define the position of Pakistan in each field of air, water and discharged pollutions.

They said under the project, the latest available gadgetries would be installed in the monitoring control systems and it was hoped that environmental field officers would be more innovative to check pollution as well as pollution sources.

The monitoring data will not only be used for teaching materials for environmental education at elementary schools up to university level, but also for creating a general perception against environmental protection among the general masses, especially environmental violators.

The sources said the ministry was hoping that the MLN would generate a baseline data that would be used for further programmes in future. In many countries, they added, air monitoring data was linked with traffic management, re- formulation of fuel, urban planning, setting up emission standards of moving/fixed sources and formulating ambient air quality standards etc.