25 September 2004	Saturday	09 Shaban 1425

PESHAWAR, Sept 24: There has been no progress on the NWFP government's directives about discontinuing the use of rubber and tyres for baking bricks, negating its efforts to control environmental pollution, officials say.

Earlier, the government had ordered public sector builders and contractors not to use bricks baked by using rubber items and tyres as fuel. The directives had been issued by the previous government, asking the provincial planning and development and the communication and works departments to ensure that yellow bricks were not used in new public sector buildings.

In 2002, the then corps commander, Peshawar, in a letter to the officials concerned, had also underlined the need for the government to take measures to bind its contractors to use only red bricks in new construction works.

"The government may consider adding a clause to the contract binding its contractors to use bricks baked from rubber-free kilns," an official of the environment department quoted the former corps commander as saying in his letter to the provincial government.

However, the move remained unattended as the use of yellow bricks in new construction works continued unabated. "If they [government functionaries] put a ban on yellow bricks, brick kilns will be forced to provide them bricks baked without using rubber as fuel," said Falak Naaz, owner of a brick kiln.

He said that in a meeting with their representatives some two years ago, President Pervez Musharraf and the then finance minister Shaukat Aziz had also indicated the government's willingness to prohibit the use of yellow bricks in government buildings. "But no action was taken," said the kiln owner. Though prohibited under Section 17 of the Pakistan Environment Act, 1997, rubber as fuel is being heavily used in large number of brick kilns posing a public health hazard.

Owners of brick kilns say that they used rubber only to give yellow colour to bricks - which were in high demand. "It is only the colour for which rubber is used, " said Falak Naz, adding that its use did not do anything to bring down the cost of brick production - a point also confirmed by authorities of the environment department.

Experts said that burning rubber produced a poisonous gas, sulphur dioxide, which resulted in air pollution. Officials of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), NWFP, said that they had not been able to convince brick kiln owners not to use rubber as fuel despite repeated meetings with them.

A German development agency, GTZ, had also carried out a project to persuade brick kiln owners to switch over to modern technology but the project failed to achieve the desired results and the huge foreign investment made in the NWFP was wasted.

Four especially designed brick kilns where Chinese brick baking technology had been introduced remained inoperative since the GTZ-funded project ended. EPA officials said that the use of rubber in brick kilns could be brought down if the previous government's instructions were implemented.

They said the P&D and C&W departments' failure to comply with the instructions undermined the EPA's efforts. The provincial public sector was the largest procurer of the largest number of bricks and any change in its demand was sure to change the market trends in the province.

"This (the ban) could lead to a decrease in demand for yellow bricks," conceded Dr Bashir Khan, director of the EPA, NWFP. Official sources said that the EPA had recently urged Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani to issue fresh instructions to impose the ban.