KARACHI: In compliance with a Supreme Court decision, the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) collected Rs80 million from eight mineral water companies and deposited the amount in the national treasury.

This is the first recovery in Sindh by Sepa on the 2019 Supreme Court judgement, which was issued on a suo motu case pertaining to companies selling water after extracting the underground source without any charge as well as to the quality and fitness of the same for human consumption.

Speaking to Dawn, Sepa spokesperson Mujtaba Baig said provincial secretary environment Mohammad Aslam Ghauri and Sepa director general Naeem Ahmad Mughal directed deputy directors Kamran Rajput and Munir Abbasi to ascertain the collectible amount after scrutinising the records of the eight companies.

“The agency has collected only 25 per cent of the levy imposed by the court. The rest would be recovered later,” he said, adding that each company paid 25 paisa per litre while the court had imposed the levy at a rate of Re1 for every litre of surface water extracted by it.

The companies which paid the water charges are: Sheezan (Rs5.76m), Mehran Beverages (Rs8m), Culligan (Rs1.2m), Nestle (Rs40m), Aquafina (13.5m), Siz Water (0.09m), Pepsi (Rs6.4m), Popular (Rs5m).

The total water charges collected come to Rs79.95m.

It might be recalled that the Supreme Court in Jan 2019 imposed a levy on companies selling mineral water and beverages at a rate of Re1 for every litre of surface water extracted by them. The collected revenue would then go to the Diamer-Bhasha and Mohmand dams’ fund created by the SC.

A similar levy was earlier imposed on the cement industry.

The apex court made it clear that the funds collected would not be diverted in any circumstances to any other purpose other than construction of the dams and water-related activities. However, once the dams are constructed, the provincial governments, subject to the order of the apex court, will be at liberty to utilise the funds collected in the accounts.

The apex court also directed the federal and provincial governments to ensure installation of foolproof and state-of-the-art metering mechanisms at every extraction unit within a period of 30 days and that the extraction would be monitored closely by the respective EPA on a daily basis.

In order to counter environmental impact, the court ordered each company to start planting 10,000 trees per annum and gradually phase out plastic bottles.

In the meantime, it said, it would be ensured that the plastic used for making bottles was certified by competent laboratories as being fit for human consumption.

Published in Dawn, July 28th , 2021