HYDERABAD, Aug 6: The director general, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Sindh, Shafique Khoso, on Tuesday has underscored the need for the immediate establishment of a treatment plant in the mills area of Kotri to avoid the discharge of industrial waste into the Kalri Baghar feeder which provides water to Karachi and Kotri.

He said this in a meeting which was held at the Mehran University of Engineering and Technology (MUET), Jamshoro. It was presided over by its vice chancellor, Dr A. R. Memon.

Mr Khoso stressed the dredging of Kalri, which is a popular picnic spot, and was getting polluted with the passage of time in the absence of rules for the picnickers.

According to a participant of the meeting, Mr Khoso regretted the attitude of the chief engineer, Site, who had assured him that the work on the establishment of an industrial effluent treatment plant would begin from Aug 1 but it did not.

It must be mentioned here that in the previous meeting, held on May 24, Tariq Baloch, a representative of the Kotri Association of Trade & Industry, had informed that 100 acres of land had been acquired near Sakina farm to dispose of the industrial effluent.

He asked Mr Tariq not to take the matter lightly as it concerns human lives and the discharge of toxic effluent in the KB feeder was hazardous as it was a source of fresh water supply for the colonies, educational institutions, industrial areas, and parts of Karachi.

Mr Khoso said that he had received a number of complaints about the Kalri Lake where picnickers dumped their waste and washed vehicles at its edge, which resulted in oil being discharged in the lake thus polluting it.

He said no government official bothered to check the activities of the picnickers at the Kalri and Haleji lakes, both of which were being polluted more and more day by day.

He said that because of excessive growth of reeds and algae in the lake fishes were dying.

He said that the fisheries department would also be consulted regarding the breeding of fish.

Mr Memon presented photographs showing the discharge of waste of the Sindh University, Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences, and their residential colonies into the KB feeder.

ATC: The Anti-Terrorism Court Judge, Hyderabad, Syed Ali Ashraf Shah, on Tuesday has awarded life imprisonment to five accused, three of them absconding, in the kidnapping case of a cloth merchant, Arif Surti.