LAHORE, June 5: Punjab Environment Minister Makhdoom Ashfaq Ahmad justifies the cutting of trees for development works. “The underpasses along the canal could not be constructed without cutting the trees,” he said at a seminar on ‘green cities’ organized in connection with the World Environment Day on Sunday at a hotel by the Pakistan Engineers Congress.
The minister said the underpasses were constructed especially to facilitate people coming to Lahore from southern Punjab cities.
However, the government was taking measures to overcome the environmental loss because of uprooting trees for the construction of underpasses.
The Makhdoom said ambiguity in laws related to environment hinder enforcement and help polluters escape punishment. “At present, it is not easy to get hold of polluters as the legal procedure is complicated,” he said and added that his department had not the capacity to combat pollution alone.
The situation would improve as the size of the environment department would be doubled during the next year, he said and added the National Environmental Policy was being finalized and would be implemented soon.
The policy had been prepared for 2005-15 and it would help improve the living environment in the country, the minister said.
He said the Punjab government had allocated a sum of Rs3 billion to ensure availability of clean drinking water to the masses.
The government was also contemplating changing the main water supply pipelines, the minister said while explaining the measures being taken to control pollution in the province.
He said residential colonies were mushrooming and the areas under cultivation or trees declining. “Real estate developers provide facilities like gas, electricity, telephone etc at these colonies but no one has installed a water treatment plant.”
Makhdoom Ashfaq said no ban was being imposed on use of two-stroke motorcycles as private transport.
However, no two-stroke public transport vehicle would ply on city roads after 2007, he said.
All two-stroke rickshaws would be phased out within two years, while motorcycle-rickshaws would be banned after July 31, he said. PEC president Engr Rana Saeed Khan in his welcome speech highlighted various issues which required immediate attention of the authorities concerned for better environment in urban areas.
He said fresh water resources were severely polluted owing to discharge of untreated municipal and industrial wastes. Municipal water supplies were not conforming to the WHO standards for drinking water.
Air pollution was on the rise especially in major urban areas and the noise pollution had been much higher than the permissible limit in certain areas of major cities, he said.
No city in Pakistan, Engr Khan said, had foolproof arrangements for 100 per cent collection of solid waste and its disposal.
Degradation and encroachment on city parks and roadside plantation was on the rise and the general public lacked awareness of pollution control.
He regretted that it seemed the authorities had learnt no lesson from the incidences in Hyderabad and Jacobabad in Sindh, besides Kasur and Pattoki in Punjab in which dozens were killed and hundreds were hospitalized owing to consumption of contaminated water.
World Environment Union’s law commission member Anjum Jawaid Khan said political will was required to arrest the deteriorating quality of environment in the country.
Environmental challenges facing the country had multiplied during the last couple of years because of factors like high population growth rate, growing poverty, unplanned urban and industrial expansion, migratory trend from rural to urban areas and insufficient emphasis on environmental protection by the government.
“Of the nine children born every minute in Pakistan, one dies because of environment-related reasons,” he said in his keynote address on ‘environmental legislation and its enforcement in Pakistan.’
Punjab Forests Conservator Rao Khalid Mahmood, Environment Department director Dr Shagufta Shahjehan, University of Veterinary Sciences dean of bio-sciences Dr Ashraf, Parks and Horticulture Authority director-general Shabbir Ahmad, environment specialist Dr M. Afzal, Nespak’s Engr Shariq Ahmad and SNGPL’s Ashraf Nadeem presented papers in the technical session of the seminar which was presided over by environment expert Dr Parvez Hassan.