LAHORE, Jan 30: Punjab Environment Protection Department secretary Brig Riaz Bashir (retired) has said there were over 120 environment laws in the country but they were not being enforced due to low priority assigned to the issue.

Speaking at a meeting on “Lessons and Imperatives of the World Summit on Sustainable Development — The Lahore Perspective” convened by the city district government here on Thursday, he said laws had existed long before the promulgation of the Environment Protection Ordinance in the 1980s followed by its adoption as the Environment Protection Act.

He said environment had not received its due priority even after the promulgation of the Act. The Punjab EPD was the smallest among the government departments with around 100 employees at its head office and 116 in the field. It had its offices in only 14 of 34 districts.

He said the provincial government had constituted an Inter-Department Enforcement Steering Committee for the enforcement of environment law in August, 2002. The committee had met only once since its constitution.

Brig Riaz said the Punjab EPD had developed software for monitoring industrial pollution despite delay by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute and would launch its own SMART (Self-Monitoring and Reporting Tool) programme from April.

He said the EPD was monitoring air pollution throughout the province and would complete sub-soil survey of 14 districts next month. The sub-soil survey of the remaining districts would be undertaken next year.

He said 40 to 60 per cent drinking water samples had been found polluted due to continued discharge of untreated effluent into water courses. The city governments had been asked to chalk out a programmes to check environmental pollution by year 2005.

Clean Production Programme adviser Azharuddin Khan, who attended the world summit at Johannesburg, said the industry in Pakistan had invested Rs3 billion in the clean production technology in three years and was investing an average Rs800 million per annum at present. The investment was expected to range between Rs1.3 billion and Rs1.7 billion per annum after 2004.

He said investments in cleaner production technology were made after the textile and leather industries went in recession after the insistence of foreign buyers on compliance with environmental standards. Plastic and metal industry had also been affected following recycling of contaminated plastic and metal imported by Gujranwala industrialists.

He said the world summit had failed to fix targets for the next 10 years. The stakeholders had attempted to shift responsibilities. Environmental issues were not given proper attention and countries like the US refused to comply with any kind of standards.

IISD Trade and Investment director Mark Halle said the world summit had set 13 targets for sustainable development till 2015 without specifying the means for achieving them. There was a debate over cultural and social interpretations of human rights and most NGOs criticized double standards observed by developed countries on this account.

He said Pakistan was losing foreign markets due to pesticide residues in agricultural products. Large textile consignments had been returned from Moscow on this account in the past.

Dr Aamir Elahi stressed the need for proper hospital waste disposal to control spread of diseases.

Dr Aslam Khan said 87 per cent people in the country died of infectious diseases and only 1.7 per cent of heart diseases. Ironically, more attention was being focussed on treatment of heart diseases.