Talking to journalists at a workshop on environmental issues, jointly organised by the Ministry of Environment and UNDP, State Minister for Environment, Major Tahir Iqbal (Retd), disclosed that the government had decided to allocate over Rs 500 million for cleaner environment in the current fiscal year.
This would be a four-fold increase from the previous year's budget.
The government, he said, has initiated several projects for environmental protection, promising that these will be successfully completed by 2007, much ahead of the initial target year of 2010.
That means the government is moving ahead full steam, as the minister put it, "in pursuance of international environment initiative." But on the ground situation suggests otherwise.
The necessary infrastructure is grossly insufficient. Take the example of the country's biggest province, Punjab. It has only one mobile air-monitoring laboratory for the entire province.
Even this one laboratory has been repaired just recently after having remained out of order for a long time, apparently, because those in charge did not think it was important enough to be fixed on an urgent basis.
As per the officially sanctioned strength, the Lahore district's environmental protection department has eight investigating officers - experts say for a Lahore size district the number should be no less than 12 - yet four out of these eight officers have been loaned to the provincial government.
The province does have an environmental tribunal, but there is only one judge to adjudicate disputed matters; and his support staff too is at a bare minimum level, with the result that the tribunal's proceedings take forever to conclude.
Things being what they are, it comes as no surprise that the provincial government has no legal advisor to help it grapple with various challenges.
There is just one legal officer to take on the entire province's polluters and handle a plethora of rules and regulations.
Environment, in fact, has the least priority for our planners and policy makers. That they have been demonstrating time and again whenever there is an occasion to give approval to various projects and schemes.
If the anti-pollution awareness level is as bad as it is at the highest levels of decision making, there is not much hope that the government will achieve great success for its anti-pollution projects ahead of the target date, as the minister boasted it would. This mindset needs to be changed urgently and effectively.
What is needed is a well thought-out policy that helps forge public-private partnerships for a cleaner environment.
The provincial industries departments, for instance, can work out a plan whereby industrial units are given incentives to install effluent treatment plants.
The tendency at present is to ask foreign donors for aid to rectify various industrial pollution problems, such as the one caused by the Kasur tanneries.
That is fine so far as problems arising from past neglect are concerned. But it is also imperative to have comprehensive, pro-environment measures and implementation mechanisms in place.
It would be desirable to make the potential polluters responsible for their actions, while extending them a helping hand through a time-specified incentives regime.
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