LAHORE: District officers of the Environment Protection Department (EPD), at a meeting on smog at the Lahore office, demanded more powers to launch a crackdown on violators of air pollution limits.

The discussion also got a little heated, according to sources present at the meeting, after which Provincial Minister Muhammad Rizwan said they would be delegated with the powers.

Sources said that Tauquir Qureshi, who currently has the charge of director of administration, began dictating DOs to start a crackdown on polluting units immediately, which the DOs did not like and said that without giving prior notice to the units, no crackdown was possible, as the courts did not accept such closure and that they could face legal action. They said EPA Director-General TanvirWarraich directed all the officers to ‘obey the law’ and asked them not to ‘exceed their powers’. The DO said, “The usual procedure is to send the units a notice demanding an answer to why they are polluting. If their answer is satisfactory, it is one thing. If not, they are then called to court for a hearing, after which the court decides on closing down the unit.”

Mr Rizwan said the law must be followed, however, Section 16 of the Environment Protection Act (EPA) specifies that the units must be given time for a hearing. Closing any industrial unit or business either if they were working in violation could not be done because of legal requirements.

Brick kilns were given more time this year to shift to the zig zag technology, industrial units were given notices only last month. The deadline was October 15.

There are over 6,000 industrial units in Punjab, of which 2,000 have installed air pollution units.

“The minister has consented to drafting a terms of procedures, let us see what happens,” said the district officer.

Sources also added that before the meeting, EPA Director Admin had also ordered all the DOs to place their mobile phones out of the meeting room. Sources said that this was happened first time in the history of EPA when district officers were humiliated in this way. “This was lack of department high ups trust on junior officials,” they said. Even the media was not allowed in the meeting.

But Mr Qureshi rubbished this and said, “Someone is spreading rumours, it was a very cordial meeting where we had a general discussion on maximizing our combat against smog.” He said that the EPD had worked vastly with DOs and had given them training and will now proceed in putting up panaflex signs and flyers for the smog awareness campaign.

“In fact we were thinking of delegating powers to DOs so that they can take action against such units on their own,” he added.

Published in Dawn, October 16th, 2019