HYDERABAD: Justice Mohammad Iqbal Kalhoro, acting as the one-man judicial commission appointed by the Supreme Court, on Saturday issued notices to the chief secretary and secretaries of the health, irrigation, public health engineering and rural development departments, as well as heads of the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board and Karachi Port Trust chairman asking them to explain why contempt of court proceedings should not be initiated against them for defying the apex court’s March 8, 13 and 16 orders.
The commission directed them to submit their replies and appear before it in person on July 1.
It also put the deputy attorney-general and Sindh advocate-general on notice for the next date of hearing asking them to explain why it should not pass an order for the start of pending work on the Right Bank Outfall Drain-II (RBOD-II) immediately regardless of the differences between the federal and Sindh governments over the issue.
The commission held its proceedings at the Sindh High Court in Karachi on Saturday.
It issued the notices after going through various reports submitted by government functionaries. It referred to various paragraphs of the apex court’s March 8, 13 and 16 orders and noted that the Sindh chief secretary in his report dated June 14 had said that the provincial government had filed an application seeking a review of SC’s March 16 order. However, the CS did not mention whether any restraining order was passed by the apex court on the application. This shows that the Sindh government failed to comply with SC’s directives which prima facie is tantamount to defiance of SC directive, according to the commission.
RBOD-II
The commission heard federal planning and development secretary Shoaib Siddiqui, the deputy attorney-general and Sindh advocate-general regarding resumption of work on the RBOD-II and noted that it appeared that federal and Sindh governments were not able to sort out their differences over commencement of the remaining construction work of the RBOD-II, which was an important project to deal with problem of saline/wastewater of Sindh.It observed that about SC’s time-bound directives on the petition filed by Advocate Shahab Osto, no substantial compliance was made or any record produced before it [the commission] to confirm compliance of those directives. It referred to SC’s March 8, 2017 order and observed that its para-12 showed that whole exercise to rehabilitate all water filtration plants was to be completed within a month of the passing of the said order and a compliance report was to be submitted in the apex court.
CS, three secretaries and heads of KWSB, SSWMB and KPT among those summoned on July 1
The commission noted that various reports were submitted in the commission but so far neither the treatment plant-I and III were made functional nor were the water filtration plants, including the one at Gharo, completely rehabilitated in compliance of the March 8 directives.
It said that evidently, no such compliance report was stated to have been submitted in SC and such failure was tantamount to violation of said directive.
Industrial effluent
The commission referred to para-4 of SC’s March 13 order dealing with the Sindh Industrial Trading Estate (SITE) with regard to effluent. It was informed by the SITE managing director that samples of effluent from factories were analysed. It said that the MD did not confirm that compliance of the March 13 order was made in toto and no substantial evidence was produced by the SITE MD. Therefore, it said, failure on the part of the SITE MD and industries secretary was prima facie defiance of apex court order.
The commission observed that for complying with SC’s March 13 order, no measures were taken by the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB) managing director and Karachi Port Trust (KPT) chairman to prevent pollution of harbour within the stipulated period of one month.
The SSWMB managing director and KPT chairman had, however, submitted their reports dated April 13 and 22, respectively, indicating the April 5 meeting.The commission regretted that the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) managing director had not even bothered to submit any report to show his concern in this regard. The commission considered it defiance of apex court order.
About management of the hospital waste, the commission pointed out that the health secretary had submitted some reports on different dates about efforts to comply with SC’s March 13 order for rehabilitating all incinerators installed in hospitals but no material confirming this fact was produced which showed that the secretary failed to rehabilitate the same in a month’s time as required.
Water channels contamination
The commission pointed out that in its March 16 order, the SC had directed the irrigation department to minimize pollution in the channels carrying clean water [for consumption of] the general public in Sindh and that a task force should take remedial steps to stop the menace [of contamination]. It noted that although the task force chairman and Sindh government submitted reports about efforts made to identify points and had found many outlets discharging waste water/effluent into the channels, probably no measure/step to check this was taken by government within a month as required.
RO/filteration plants
The commission referred to para-30 of SC’s March 16 order directing the provincial government to withdraw installation and maintenance work of reverse osmosis/filteration plants from the special initiative department (SID) or Sindh Coal Authority (SCA) and to assign the job to the public health engineering and rural development department as the executing agencies under the Sindh Government Rules of Business. It recalled that the Sindh chief secretary in his June 14 report, had submitted [in the commission] that in terms of the schedule-II of the Sindh Government Rules of Business, SID was mandated to construct and maintain RO/filteration plants. The CS submitted a copy of the notification dated May 9. The commission observed that apparently the said notification amending the Rules of Business, 1986 was issued much after the apex court directives of March 16.
The commission put the chief secretary on notice asking him to explain validity of said notification and its repercussions, particularly in the backdrop of the specific SC directive on the issue.
Disregard of SC directive
Justice Kalhoro in his June 17 order said that the public health engineering and rural health department secretary had not submitted any report for perusal of the commission for further action or any evidence to the effect that it had undertaken responsibility for installation and maintenance of all RO plants in Sindh as directed by the SC on March 16. He observed that it was obviously a disregard to directive.
The commission noted that in response to SC’s March 16 order, the Sindh government did not withdraw municipal functions from Northern Sindh Urban Services Corporation (NSUSC) and it also did not approach any other reputed audit firm for an audit of the corporation’s accounts as desired by the SC.
The commission said that the apex court had not passed any stay order on the Sindh government’s review application regarding the very directive.
Builders’ plea dismissed
The commission also dismissed as ‘not maintainable’ an application filed by the Association of Builders and Developers (ABAD) seeking suspension of the May 23 notification regarding a moratorium on the Sindh Building Control Authority.
Published in Dawn, June 18th, 2017
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