Provincial Development Working Party (PDWP), in its meeting, has passed the scheme of establishment of environmental laboratories in five big cities including Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Rahim Yar Khan and Bahawalpur with the objective of monitoring load of pollution and its overall adverse impact on the environment.
The Secretary, Planning and Development Department, Sohail Ahmad, while giving details said that cost of the project would be Rs 70 million and it would be executed by the Environment Protection Agency Punjab. He said that previously there was only one central environmental laboratory at Lahore, which was not sufficient to cater environmental testing requirements in the entire province.
He further explained that pollution in the air, water and soil, coupled with natural resources degradation was going upward day-by-day with ever-increasing pollution-intensive agri farming, spray of pesticides, industrialisation and motorisation.
Therefore, he said, need was felt to assess the situation so that proper measures for its protection could be planned. "We do not have even pollution measuring equipment to monitor National Environment Quality Standard (NEQS) parameters", concluded Sohail Ahmad.