ISLAMABAD, June 5: The Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) has urged academia to work on indigenous manufacturing of pollution control devices, efficient in working and competitive in prices to encourage industries for its installation.

The ICCI President Nasir Khan in a statement issued here on Tuesday said imported devices are usually expensive, which discouraged the industries to install these.

He urged greater interaction between industry and academia to control environmental pollution. He emphasized to take prompt and appropriate action in controlling the pollution otherwise the situation would be critical.

He said the ICCI and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken measures for installing pollution control devices in the steel industries. He said that EPA greatly assisted industries in designing the air pollution devices.

Mr Khan said that with increase in industries, traffic and population, pollution is gradually on the rise and urged that a concrete and long term strategy need to be evolved to tackle the existing and emerging pollution problems.

He said entire world is very much concerned on environmental pollution and stressed that through seminars, workshops and conferences awareness should be created about it. He said environmental pollution is causing a big change in the climate, which would make life difficult on the earth.