KARACHI, Feb 14: Out of total 350 million gallons per day of waste from Karachi that finds way into the sea, the share of Karachi's entire industrial estates is estimated at around 100 million gallons per day.

The WTO requirement for environmental compliance has already got under way from January 1, 2005 with the start of post-quota regime and exporters/industrialists have finally taken the notice, though late, to gear up their efforts to have common effluent treatment plants and hazardous waste handling facility in the Karachi industrial estate under foreign pressure.

Industrialists know that in case of non-compliance, they would find it difficult fulfil the main requirement of foreign buyers in the post-quota regime.

Under WTO regime, environmental compliance has become essential from January but foreign buyers and even the WTO are being convinced that efforts in Pakistan are under way to have a proper system of waste handling in order to avoid any immediate action that could threaten suspension of exports from Pakistan.

Market sources said that the WTO requirement was actually pushing the industrialists and exporters, thus binding them to make their industrial units environmentally compliant, otherwise they least interested in implementing this vital aspect because of apathy of both federal and local governments.

Efforts are being made to get the extension from the WTO on this vital issue as the various industrial estates are in the process of implementing it, chairman Site Association of Industry, Dr Mirza Ikhtiar Baig said.

"Despite the fact that the environmental compliance under WTO has already got underway from January but we need time to totally become compliant," he said adding that he cannot give any specific time frame of getting the effluent treatment plant and hazardous waste handling facilities ready.

Industries in Site area dump 35 million gallons of waste per day in the sea which also includes five million gallons of residential waste. He said that the Industry Ministry has approved a 40 million gallon per day of industrial waste treatment plant in Site area as against the earlier proposal of two plant of 20 million gallon per day each.

Site Association will send its approval within 15 days for the selection of land at TP-111 presently owned by KMC/City government. A joint stock company is being set up to implement, supervise and monitor the project.

The project is proposed on 30:70 per cent debt equity basis with a total cost of Rs2.5 billion out of which Rs756 million will be equity of the stakeholders. The city government will contribute Rs92 million in the form of land for the project. The government will bear the cost of consultants and other studies of the project.

Mirza said that the repayment of loan would be done by charging effluent treatment charges from the industries at Rs17 per cubic metre out of which Rs12 is the operating cost and Rs5 per cubic metre is the financial cost of the loan. Besides Site, effluent treatment plant is also being set up in Landhi and Korangi industrial areas and three in other parts of the country.

A spokesman of Korangi Association of Trade and Industry (KATI) said that buyers are being convinced that efforts in the Korangi area to handle the waste material are being made by setting up effluent treatment plant but the completion of plant will take some time. He, however, said that the plant has been sanctioned. But he did not give any detail as to how much waste comes out from the Korangi industrial area.