SANGHAR, Oct 5: The Environment Protection Agency has failed to have its law that requires cotton ginners to set up filter plants, implemented as none, except one, has set up filter plant to prevent discharge of cotton dust in the atmosphere.

The district, which has the highest acreage of cotton crop in Sindh, has 62 cotton ginning factories that release cotton dust in the atmosphere, causing dust allergy and other respiratory diseases among hundreds of people who live in the vicinity.

Some confirmed reports of deaths due to dust allergy have been recorded, while many families have shifted to other places. Several meetings, attended by EPA officials and ginners' representatives, have been held in the district council, as well as offices of the DCO and the district agriculture officer, to discuss the problem.

Ginners have repeatedly been given time frame of 15 days to set up the plants, but they fail to comply, in fact, they are not even willing to heed to warnings or orders.

At the most, they put gunny bags over the dust room to pass it as a filter plant. Anyone passing by a ginning factory can easily see the dust rising in the air. Moreover, trees as well as power and telephone lines around the factories are completely covered with the dust.

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