KARACHI, March 11: A division bench of the Sindh High Court has issued notices to the Ministry of Environment, the federal and provincial Environment Protection Agency (EPA) and others on a petition seeking direction for the authorities to convert public transport vehicles to CNG and remove smoke-emitting vehicles from the city.

The petitioners, Helpline Trust and others, through Kamal Jabbar Advocate, submitted that air pollution had become a grave threat to the residents of Karachi. According to a study conducted by the Ministry of Environment, about 16.28 million people of the city were suffering the adverse effects of air pollution while the World Bank had estimated that 16,800 premature deaths in Pakistan were directly attributed to it.

Naming the Ministry of Environment, the federal and provincial EPA and others as respondents, the petition stated that by allowing dangerous, toxic pollutants to roam freely through the air, the respondents were violating the fundamental rights of the people. He pointed out that the previous order of the court regarding the removal of all smoke-emitting vehicles from the city had been implemented only momentarily.

After a series of strikes by transporters, polluting vehicles had been allowed back onto the streets and today they were continuing to choke the lungs of the city with impunity. With rapid increases in population, urbanisation, economic growth and access to car financing, the vehicular population of Karachi has also undergone a dramatic increase.

These changes have led to a palpable deterioration in the quality of urban air, resultant increases in eye, nose, lung and respiratory diseases and cancer. The World Health Organisation already found that air pollution levels in Karachi were about 20 times higher than what was considered safe.

The petitioners prayed the court to declare the current level of pollution in urban areas a grave threat to citizens and direct the respondents to ensure the conversion of all public transport to CNG or other environment-friendly sources of energy. It was also prayed to direct the respondents to ensure the permanent removal of smoke- and noise-emitting vehicles besides the removal of two-stroke engine vehicles from the city.

The SHC's division bench comprising Justice Musheer Alam and Justice

Yasmeen Abbasy, after the preliminary hearing, issued notice to the respondents and the AG and the DAG of Sindh for a date to be fixed by the office of the court.