PESHAWAR, Oct 7: Procedural loopholes and lack of expertise and experience of various departments and project executing agencies have undermined the usefulness of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), official sources said.

Under section 12 of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act (Pepa), 1997, public and private organizations are required to carry out the EIA and submit their report to the agencies concerned to get their approval before launching any project.

"Failure to fulfil the provisions of the 1997 Act is a punishable offence," the sources said, adding that certain departments and project executing agencies of the provincial government were finding it difficult to go by the book because of lack of capacity on their part to prepare the EIA.

The exercise, they said, was time consuming and required expertise to ensure that there were no adverse effects of their project on the environment of the area concerned.

"Mega projects involving multi-billion rupee investment are adhering to EIA's regulations, but the problem lies with small projects," said a development planner. In the case of small projects, he pointed out, funds were not provided by the government to project executing agencies unless PC-1 of the scheme was approved by the competent authorities.

Officials said that EIA's formulation involved money and it had to be carried out before the execution of a project started. But, according to rules, funds could not be released unless PC-1 was approved.

Lack of willingness to submit the EIA on the part of line departments was also undermining the provincial government's efforts to adopt EIA in its planning procedures, sources said.

They said that the provincial EPA's representative on the Provincial Development Working Party had to "make a lot of effort" to convince the representatives of the line departments that they had to submit the EIA to the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) on a project in accordance with Pepa Act, 1997.

Though the federal government had notified rules relating to the EIA way back in 2000, the provincial government departments started working on it only recently, said officials.

"The NWFP is far ahead of other provinces," claimed provincial EPA director Dr Bashir Khan. He conceded there were many things that needed to be rectified in the case of small projects to make the EIA process effective. However, he said, the government's efforts to make its line departments fulfil the EIA-related rules were producing results.

Highlighting the importance of the EIA, he said: "EIA enhances the life span of a project." The NWFP government, according to him, had undertaken a Rs18 million project to impart EIA-related training to the staff of its line departments and the local body institutions to ensure that EIA was carried out before any project was executed.