KARACHI, Feb 28: Sindh Ombudsman Haziqul Khairi, who visited the headquarters of Sindh Environmental Protection Agency SEPA, on Thursday deplored that despite a lapse of almost three years, no step had been taken to enforce relevant legislative enactment.

He, accompanied by Advisers Khan Yousuf Jamal and Bahauddin Sirhindi, went round in SEPA’s premises in Korangi Industrial Area and inspected the costly newly-imported equipment lying in its laboratories in a “state of total disuse”.

Likewise an expensive van donated by the European Union agency was parked idle in an open space adjoining the premises though the aim of the donors was its use for outdoor monitoring levels of air, water and noise pollutions.

A press release issued by the Ombudsman office said the literature meant for dissemination and creating awareness of the imperatives of environmental improvement was found stocked unused in a dysfunctional library-cum-reading room of the Agency.

The ombudsman regretted that although Environmental Protection Tribunal had been constituted and environmental magistrates appointed for long, they were lying non-functional with the result that no private or public complaint could be filed before them, thus defeating very objective of the law.

SEPA Director-General Shafiq Ahmed Khoso informed the Ombudsman he was short of technical personnel who could properly utilise the expensive equipment, mobile van and motivational literature.

The ombudsman identified some specific areas of action by SEPA to effectively combat growing pollution of the Malir and Lyari rivers, coastline and Manchar and Haleji lakes. Valuable national marine wealth was being systematically destroyed by the massive in-flow of toxic elements, including untreated effluent, poisonous discharge from tanneries and unincinerated solid water patently hazardous for public wealth.

Justice Haziqul Khairi outlined modalities to organize seminars for creating public awareness in Hyderabad, Larkana, and Sukkur to highlight problems of dangerous rise of sub-soil water table which was adversely affecting agriculture of Sindh.

The ombudsman had, in the recent past, taken suo-motu cognizance of a number of instances where environmental degradation had taken place in the province.—PPI