The air pollution in Punjab had aggravated after dry and cloudy weather with open garbage burning in Lahore and other major districts with poor air quality left uncontrolled.

Director General Punjab Environment Protection Department (EPD) Tanveer Ahmad Warraich said, "The main issue of air pollution and smog in Lahore city consists of vehicular emissions, industrial gaseous releases, particularly steel units, open garbage burning and scrap burning in the provincial capital."

Talking to APP, the DG EPD said the fifth smog season was taking place in Lahore and other parts of the country. The trans-boundary pollution along with indigenous pollution and smoke producing elements had further aggravated the situation, he added.

He said only in Lahore there were estimated 2,700 scrap burning units who regularly burn different substances to extract raw material whereas over 400 steel manufacturing units were operating with very few having wet scrubbers installed to curb dark emissions.

To a question, he said there was Section 144 imposed on open household garbage burning in Lahore where direct First Information Report (FIR) was to be issued against any culprit found violating the law.

In order to penalize the people burning garbage on the spot was a difficult task due to paucity of resources and it was also not possible to mitigate the smog risk with public cooperation.

Responding another query, he said the rice crop stubble burning was done in Sahiwal, Faisalabad, Lahore, Gujranwala and Sialkot Divisions where rice crop husks were burnt after the harvest.

"Unless we convince the farmers to adopt the happy seeder technology that removes the rice husks and sows wheat seeds automatically, no change in stubble burning could be achieved. We have to give incentives and subsidies to the rice farmers to shift to latest technology," he added.

Copyright Associated Press of Pakistan, 2019