The Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) has hardly achieved any task since its inception about eight years back as it feels handicapped to enforce laws and take action against the elements creating pollution in the province, mainly owing to dearth of required manpower. SEPA Director General Shafiq Ahmed Khoso has realised that SEPA has the manpower of only 80, including seven officers at its headquarter in Karachi and sub-offices in the interior of Sindh against the strength of 450 staffers available to Punjab Environmental Protection Department.
Speaking at a radio programme here on Sunday, he said the government had sanctioned 10 posts of legal inspectors in PBS-11 for the SEPA, for which Sindh Public Service Commission had been requested to make arrangements for the selection.
He said the SEPA had also sent a proposal to the government for sanctioning of another 30 staff members and hopefully it would be approved in due course of time.
Khoso said the legal inspectors would be assigned a task to conduct inspection wherever the complaints of violating the environmental laws were reported.
He was of the view that 60 percent of the industries of Pakistan were located in Karachi, of which 90 percent industries discharge their wastewater and other effluents into sea through Malir and Lyari rivers. Besides, they dump the solid waste in the coastal areas damaging the marine life and environment, he added.
To a question, Khoso said that the Asian Development Bank had offered 100 million dollars for setting up 6 treatment plants in the country of which three would be installed in Karachi.
Replying to another query, why the interior of Sindh had been neglected in this plan, the DG said, it was proposed that one out of three treatment plants should be installed at Kotri industrial area where the factories discharge their effluent into K B feeder that supplies water to Karachi.
The SEPA, however, carried out a survey according to which four factories were found discharging such effluent into the canal. In this connection the notices were issued to the factories management immediately, in which two factories responded and stopped discharging effluent, while two other factories were sealed for non-compliance of the orders, he added.
Moreover, he said, the district governments had also been asked to install treatment plants especially where the domestic wastewater and solid waste was discharged into canals. For instance, he said, domestic wastewater of Larkana was discharged into the rice canal and that of Hyderabad into Phuleli and Pinjari canals from where the water was supplied to a vast area for irrigation as well as drinking purpose.
The DCO of Hyderabad had been directed to ensure that no domestic wastewater is released to these canals, he added.
About any action against the industries in Karachi, the DG said his organisation issued notices to 80 tanneries besides several other industrial concerns at different times for causing pollution.
"Currently, under a federal government program, the industries have been sent forms to fill up and return suggesting the steps that could be taken by them voluntarily for combating the pollution," he told.
Regarding the action against smoke-emitting vehicles, he said, during a recent campaign launched in collaboration with traffic police, the SEPA cancelled fitness certificates of 2,500 vehicles besides impounding a number of vehicles.
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