KARACHI, June 8: The Sindh Assembly was informed on Friday that the environment department had proposed setting up of offices of Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) in all districts of the province and the chief minister had approved the proposal.

Responding to a question asked by PML-Functional lawmaker Nusrat Sahar Abbasi during the question-hour session, Environment Minister Shaikh Afzal said that the finance department was finalising the proposal in order to include it in the budget. These offices would ensure effective and focused activity of Sepa at the district level, he added.

Ms Abbasi asked that whether the government intended to establish environmental management units in all districts.

The questions hour was related to the provincial environment department and it concluded within 20 minutes since the minister had to answer only four questions — all asked by PML-F lawmakers Ms Abbasi and Marvi Rashdi — and there were not many supplementary questions.

Responding to another question, the minister said that walks, seminars, debate contests, etc, were organised by Sepa in connection with the World Earth Day to raise awareness among the masses so that they could also play their role in checking the environmental pollution.

The minister said that to observe the world environment day on April 22, 2011 main events of inter-school debate contests and tableaus were organised by Sepa at Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Mirpurkhas, Shaheed Benazirabad and Larkana.

To a question by Ms Abbasi, he said that though Sepa had not organised any major event in Khairpur, other stakeholders including industrial associations, educational institutions, non-governmental and government organisations might haveorganised programmes there.

Responding to Pakistan People’s Party’s Munawar Abbasi’s supplementary question that MPAs were not invited in a programme held in Larkana, the minister said that although the programme was organised by the district government, he felt that public representatives should have been invited to the programmes.

In reply to another question by Ms Abbasi regarding discharge of poisonous liquid by fertilizer factories near Dharki and Ghotki owing to which residents of surrounding villages suffered from various diseases, the minister said that complaints were received by Sepa earlier regarding these two factories and the matter was investigated and no violation of the National Environmental Quality Standards (NEQS) was detected at that point of time. The Sukkur office of Sepa was monitoringthese industries on a regular basis, he added.

The minister replied in the negative when the same legislator asked him whether the department had cancelled the licences of any polluting units.

He said that Sepa did not issue licences to industries or any other organisations.

However, as per law it was necessary for all projects to get an environmental impact assessment (EIA) or initial environmental examination (IEE) approved from Sepa and to inform it whether they were polluting or not.