KARACHI, Jan 2: Federal Environment Minister Major (Retd) Tahir Iqbal saying that international donors are ready to help in implementing projects for the protection and conservation of environment called upon local entrepreneurs to come up with such projects.

“It would be a responsibility of the ministry of environment to get the required funds from the donors,” the minister said while speaking as the chief guest at a seminar titled “Environment legislation and management in textile sector”, at Federation House on Monday. The seminar was organized by the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry and patronized by Pakistan State Oil.

He said that his ministry would soon launch a project SMART-II to ensure quality environment in and around industries especially for meeting the demands of the World Trade Organization.

“Under this project, every industry in the country would be asked to provide details of toxic effluent discharged by the units. Under a similar project SMART-I, data of 80 industrial units was collected,” he said, adding that the data collected in this way would be helpful for the government in revising the environmental legislation and national environmental quality standards.

“Many developed countries were requiring ISO-14000 certification from the exporters,” he said. By adopting the ISO-14000 standards, he said, the industries would not only qualify for exports under the WTO but contribute towards healthy environment for local population.

“If pollution increases, you would have workers with very low working capacity,” he remarked.

He said any development at the cost of environment should not be carried out at all. He urged the business community to join hands with the government in furthering its agenda of maintaining clean environment in the country.

About the use of polythene bags, he said that as an immediate measure the government had decided to allow the manufacturing of only better quality and thick bags. The customers would have to pay some money for such bags which would force them to use less number of bags. However, he said, the ministries of industry and commerce would be involved in discussing alternative to these bags.

The federal minister also inaugurated the Global Environment Mobile Lab, the fist facility set up in private sector. It would test air and liquid effluent. He announced that Japan Inter-national Cooperation Agency would help in implementing 100 million dollars project for establishing mobile air and water environmental labs.—APP