LAHORE, Oct 6: The Punjab may continue to face the industrial pollution hazards as five of 66,000 industries have got themselves registered so far under the Environment Protection Department’s Self-Monitoring and Reporting Tools programme.

The EPD had launched the SMART programme in April this year, asking the industrialists to assess pollution their industries were producing on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis and submit the reports to the department.

The industries generating a huge amount of waste water had been asked to submit the pollution assessment report on a quarterly basis. However, the industrialists have paid no heed to the calls of their chambers of commerce and industry and are reluctant to get their industries registered under this programme.

None of the 237 tanneries in Kasur also have submitted the environment assessment report to the EPD.

After receiving the environment assessment reports, the EPD was to forward these to the federal government with a proposal to install water treatment plants or impose pollution charge on the industries.

The EPD officials believe that the nature of the SMART was the main cause of its failure because no industrialist would like to seek the EPD’s registration unless he had a fear of being fined or imposed some other penalty for non-compliance.

They say self-assessment or monitoring of pollution by the industries is not possible in that the process requires a laboratory test of effluent and its submission to the EPD without tampering. Besides, the EPD has not set any deadline for the industries to get themselves registered under the SMART programme.

Pakistan Environmental Lawyers’ Association member, Advocate Anjum Javed Khan, told Dawn on Monday that the EPD should have forced the industrialists to register themselves under this programme. It should have also constituted a monitoring body to check the industrial pollution and recommended action on its findings, he added.

“The EPD did not analyze the fact that some industrialists may not give a detailed account of pollution their industries are generating,” he said, iterating that the EPD was required to plan properly before launching the programme.

Mr Khan also suggested that the department should ask the heads of all the chambers in the province to convince the industrialists to act upon the plan without which the whole exercise would go waste.

The SMART was initiated keeping in view the implementation of the World Trade Organization in the country in 2005. Under the WTO, no industry could export its products without being certified under the ISO 14,000. And the industries without the water treatment plants would not be certified, the programme stressed.

It is obvious that all the industries cannot install water treatment plants, which is quite expensive. Few major industries in the province have water treatment plants.

EPD Secretary Kamran Lashari said the purpose of the SMART was to help the industrialists face the challenges of the WTO. The industrialists’ reluctance to get their industries registered under this programme would earn them no dividends because sooner or later they would have to install water treatment plants according to the size and nature of the industry to avoid a ban on its exports under the WTO.

“If the industrialists provide correct data to the EPD, it will help them install water treatment plants,” said the EPD secretary. He said the industrialists here were not prepared to face the challenges after the implementation of the WTO. “They are under an impression that the government will in the end take some measures to avoid the implementation of the WTO.”

The government, Mr Lashari said, would also provide loans to the industries for the installation of the water treatment plants.

He admitted that there were fundamental flaws in the design of the programme, saying he would recommend to the federal government to review it.