KOHAT, Dec 4: A large number of people living in about eight villages and towns in the surrounding of Kohat Cement Company (KCC) have complained of increased dust in the air, and chest and eye infections since last June.

It has been learnt that the KCC has started using coal instead of electricity in its huge kiln to save manufacturing cost of cement.

The whole area remains covered with fog and receives less sunlight than is needed for plants and human body. This was observed by this correspondent during a visit to the area.

The most affected towns are Babri Banda and Bahadur Kot and some parts of the frontier region of Kohat.

Mr Altaf, a villager of Babri Banda, demonstrated the increased pollution by putting a piece of glass in the open air which was completely covered with dust after a few hours.

He said that they had written to the federal ministry for environment many a time but no action had been taken against the administration of the company. A team did visit the villages and collected dust and air samples but the administration of the company was just reprimanded.

He said that regular blasts in the nearby mountains, conducted to excavate limestone, are a permanent nuisance for the locals. In a few cases, the walls of houses near the site had cracked. He said the excavation site had been continuously moving towards their villages over the years, and now had become too close.

Mr Irfan Afridi, another villager, told Dawn that they had also filed a case in the Peshawar High Court sometime back which, in turn, had asked the administration to solve the problem, but to no avail.

He alleged that newborn babies were the most affected, who suffered from serious respiratory problems, a result of the enormous dust emitted by the KCC.

When this correspondent put a question regarding the glass test to deputy general manager production of the KCC, Mr Abdul Hakeem Arain, he said the dust was not due to the emissions from the plant but because of the heavy traffic plying on the busy Kohat-Rawalpindi road.

However, he failed to explain as to why the area remained enveloped in fog as far apart as five kilometres from the road since the construction of the cement plant more than 15 years ago. And what else had caused an increase in dust during the past six months, if not the plant’s conversion to coal during the same period.

He said that initially they had some problem with the plant when the dust collecting bags were destroyed in a fire in the plant. They immediately replaced them with the bags which were locally available and imported original ones which had been installed. However, there is a problem of increased dust which is due to the quality of coal available in the country.

He said there was an in-built pollution control system comprising heavy fans installed in the new plant which collected the dust.

He said they had imported a brand new plant from Germany and the emissions from the kiln were well under control. He explained that the dangerous limit of dust was 300 and above grams per million cube whereas, according to their laboratory tests, the quantity of dust emitted by the kiln was recorded between 170 and 175 grams per million cube.

He said recently foreign experts visited their plant under a joint programme organized by the national environment protection agency to check industrial pollution and certified that the emissions were well under control.

Another officer, Saifullah Khan, who is the deputy general manager legal of the cement company said these problems were natural and even developed countries were also faced with spread of similar pollution-related diseases.

He admitted that about 350 officers who live in the company’s residential colony just a few meters from the kiln were more vulnerable to the problem and had been complaining of health and vision problems. He said that in the cement manufacturing a lot of crushing of limestone and baking was involved which naturally released carbon dioxide and dust which could only be controlled to some extent.

Replying to a question, he said the kiln was burning 600 tones of coal every day. He said they could feel the gravity of the problem but had no other choice but to switch over to coal as the prices of furnace oil had become exorbitant over the last few years. They had to keep the plant running for continuous 24 hours to meet the ever-increasing market demand of cement, both at home and in Afghanistan.