KARACHI, Sept 2: A meeting of environmental experts, on Tuesday, expressed concern over lack of coordination and absence of a national level mechanism to address disasters like the one being faced nowadays due to the grounding of an oil tanker Tasman Spirit.
The meeting was organized by the IUCN - the World Conservation Union, to pool the information gathered about the issue and to determine the way forward.
Representatives of various agencies and departments gave their assessment of the situation and stressed the need for an integrated approach to address the damage.
Sindh Environment Secretary Shujaat Karni said that the long- term implications of the oil spill could be very serious and would impact the livelihoods of the coastal communities and cause economic losses to the national exchequer through loss of export earnings of the fisheries products.
He said that the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) had already formed various technical committees to document the impacts on different ecological parameters and the results obtained would be used to assess the damage.
The UNDP Resident Representative, Onder Yucer, assured the availability of funds for conducting studies to assess the impact and informed the participants that an expert of UNDP would be arriving shortly to assess the damage to livelihoods in the area.
The meeting was informed that the IUCN had also invited Richard Steiner, a professor at the University of Alaska Marine Advisory Programme, to assist in damage assessment and the preparation of a rehabilitation plan for the affected area. Some Alaskan beaches were among the worst sufferers over a decade back when a huge oil tanker spilled its liquid hydrocarbon near its shores.
Federal Environment Secretary Javed Zafar promised full support of the federal government in the operation. The IUCN has also instituted a technical committee to prepare a rapid appraisal and work on the development of a restoration plan.
The meeting was also attended by Director General SEPA Shaique A. Khoso, IUCN-Pakistan chief Abdul Latif Rao and others.
KU SURVEY: The University of Karachi conducted a survey in coastal localities to ascertain the effects recent oil spill from the stranded oil tanker Tasman Spiriton individuals.
The lighterage operation on the broken ship was concluded on Monday and maritime sources believe that in the meantime the ship flushed out about 30,000 tonnes crude oil into the sea, which surely caused problems to fishermen and people residing in different localities along the beach due to oil pollution.
Under the supervision of Dr Nasreen Shah of Social Work Department of Karachi University, the survey was conducted in Ibrahim Hyderi, Kharkar Chowrangi, Tapo and Shireen Jinnah Colony. In all, 120 people affected due to pollution were interviewed for the survey.
On the basis of the limited survey, it was said that people faced social and economical problems in the wake of oil spillage. The sufferers, who were over 50 years, constituted 22.95 per cent of the survey size.
Those in the age bracket of 15 to 20 years, who were affected by the oil spillage, were 17 per cent while people from 31 to 35 years of age constituted 11.5 per cent. Around 40 per cent males were affected economically.
Professionally, the labourers (22.95 per cent), fishermen (16.5 per cent), and students (14.45 per cent) and housewives (13.6 per cent) were affected due to pollution. The diseases, which were mainly complained, were eye problems, skin allergy, discomfort in breathing and sore of throat, the survey report added.
It was mentioned that the most affected community was that of fishermen. They said that fish, which they used to catch near the shore had gone away while people had also stopped buying fish.