KARACHI, May 31: The Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (PEPA) will issue legal notice in near future to the owners of Tasman Spirit for payment of compensation against damages done to life and environment due to huge oil spill in Karachi waters in 2003.

PEPA Director-General Asif Shuja told this to the participants of the national symposium on “Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA)” during its concluding session on Tuesday. The secretary of the Sindh government on environment, Shamsul Haque Memon was the chief guest of the session.

Mr Shuja informed the gathering that issuance of a legal notice to the owners of Tasman ship and providing them opportunity to formally clarify their position prior to issuance of any Environmental Protection Order was required under the provision of Pakistan Environmental Protection Act, 1997.

We will not allow the owners of the ship, who caused enormous ecological and socio-economic loses, to go free, he added, saying that Pakistan would use political channels and also take up the spill issue at the international level, whether it was international court of justice, UNEP, IMO or any other related convention.

The director-general also mentioned other efforts made so far in regard to the recovery of pollution damages taking place in the wake of Tasman’s spill and said that a high-level committee constituted by the prime minister had already negotiated with the ship’s owners on two different occasions.

We understand that polluters would have to pay the cost of clean-up and restoration of the environment to the condition existing prior to the incident of the ship grounding and oil spill, he added.

Mr Shuja said that the NRDA would now enter the second phase of studies that would focus on long term monitoring of the oil impacted and adjacent coastal areas to record the effects of Tasman’s spill.

Ecological and water quality monitoring of the affected areas will be carried out at regular intervals to ascertain the rate of recovery of the coastal habitats and marine ecosystems including mangroves, he mentioned.

The environment secretary, Shamsul Haq Memon, said that there were obvious challenges to the Sindh coastal environment in addition to oil spills, which needed to be understood properly.

He stressed the need for a joint working by the federal and provincial government authorities in achieving some targets, which included creation of awareness among the masses about the effects of oil spills, adaptation of new ethics which emphasized prevention rather than cure, taking all necessary measures for protection of critical coastal habitat, prevention of pollution entering in to seas through land based sources to avoid depletion of fish stocks.

Mr Memon also called for improvement of existing environmental legislation to cover management of the marine pollution and areas of special ecological interests like mangroves forests and marine turtle habitats.

He noted that for a quick information disseminations in cases of emergencies which might lead to significant adverse impacts, one like that of the oil spill, there was a need to constitute a single body, group or committee, with the capacity of any emergency response centre, which could assist, guide in legal and technical aspects as well.

Sindh EPA Director-General Iqbal Nafees Khan said that the symposium in question, which provided an opportunity to find out losses to our environment due to lapses on the part of others, also brought our strengths and weaknesses to light.

He hoped that the deliberations of the symposium, which brought all stakeholders together, would provide a positive thrust to the efforts to restore the marine ecosystem.

Prof Richard Steiner of University of Alaska, USA, in his presentation on restoration strategy, also suggested for reducing human disturbances around sensitive habitats through increased enforcement of laws and regulations.