DAILY reports on various weather apps show Islamabad’s air quality to be either ‘unhealthy’ or ‘very unhealthy’, and it even gets ‘hazardous’ every now and then. Are we all sleep-walking into disaster while blaming others for the mess?

All I hear is that we are stuck in this environmental catastrophe due to other countries doing this to us, and I see no action at our end at all. How long are we going to keep playing the victim card? It is time to take some responsibility at our end, too. We need to start taking immediate tangible steps towards controlling the factors that contribute to making the air quality unhealthy.

These include stricter regulation for number of vehicles to be allowed to enter Islamabad, mandatory vehicles fitness certification every six months, reducing traffic jams, as an idle engine burns fuel inefficiently and emits higher concentrations of harmful gases that are linked to smog and respiratory issues. We should stop cutting down trees in the name of progress, and incentivise car-pooling. There is also a need to spread awareness at the grassroots level. There is no other Islamabad. The time to take action is now.

Amatuz Zahra Rizvi
Islamabad

Published in Dawn, January 14th, 2026