Tanners ignore EU warning against toxic waste treatment

European Union (EU) has once again warned the tanneries, discharging toxic waste without any treatment, and threatened to cancel their export orders. According to a survey, of the total of 200 tanneries, only 100 are discharging the waste after treating it by the newly established effluent treatment plant (ETP).
Despite repeated warnings by the EU and other countries, the owners of such tanneries have turned a deaf ear to these warnings. An prominent industrialist told Business Recorder that the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) had also ignored this matter of grave concern and no action had so far been taken against any violator of the environmental regulations.
He criticised the Sepa officials for showing indifference to the environmental degradation in the province. He said that in Punjab, the provincial Environment Protection Agency had not only issued notices to thousands of industrial units for violating the environmental laws, but also imposed heavy fines on them or sealed such factories in some cases. Contrary to this, performance of Sepa was very poor in controlling the increasing pollution being created by the factories, he added.
According to environmentalists, industrial pollution is not only hazardous to the people''s health, but is also affecting the exports. It may be mentioned that under the World Trade Organisation (WTO), all industrial units would have to undergo environmental auditing.
The Sepa has issued thousands of notices to industrial units and factories for violating environmental, but it did bring to book the violators, he said. "It is obligatory on Sepa to take action against the factories, causing environmental degradation after issuing notices to them, but it could not be seen on the ground," he said.
He asked the Sepa authorities to take stern action against the owners of those tanneries, who had not joined the newly built treatment plant, which ETP had been set up to ensure discharge of treated sewerage water into the sea. He feared that in case they continued to discharge the toxic water without any treatment, then they could face difficulties in getting export orders from the international market, particularly the EU.