Things that should be provided, but aren’t!
Skardu was held hostage by its own people a week ago, when a five day blackout brought people to the street in protest. The shortage of power is no breaking news item. Admittedly, though, we of the media do display a certain doggedness when it comes to digging up the problems others have become complacent about. And the government’s utter inability to resolve the power shortage is the least of what we tend to unearth.
For instance, older residential zones that still use dated, rusted piping (like old Lahore) are vulnerable to lead poisoning via water – and at least two cases were discovered in Karachi recently. Also, in 1997, an Act was passed by the National Assembly and the Senate, to “provide for the protection, conservation, rehabilitation and improvement of the environment,” and the “prevention and control of pollution”. An agency exists to ensure the prevention of pollution and the provision of a clean, healthy atmosphere, and yet Lahore’s smog – chock full of carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide – is still very much in action. Vehicles and Orange Line are hardly the main culprits. Crop burning – implemented increasingly by farmers to deal with the stubble left by the popular combined harvesters – also contributed to the 2016 smog that left Lahore’s low-air-quality competing with Beijing’s. Research suggests that quite a bit of that came from nearby Indian farmers, if the similar state of Delhi is anything to go by.
In international law, there exists the right to, in effect, sue for such trans-boundary pollution. This, however, requires evidence, which requires, in this case, scientific instruments and devices – plenty of them. And the GOP – whose provincial capital has been worst hit – only owns one such device. That’s hardly going to provide convincing evidence.
“How do the French cook frogs?” asked a panellist at an environmental seminar in Lahore on Friday. “Not in boiling water – it’ll jump out. The frog is left in a pot of water that’sslowly heated, and heated, until, finally, without realising the danger, the frog dies. Lahoris, my friends, are such French frogs.”
In 1985, a study in West Germany found hospitals issued over 24,000 death certificates after the effect of just five daysof smog. Lahore’s been suffering for months. No one is denying the necessity of infrastructure development and trade – but these are people’s lives at stake. Projects like the Orange Line and CPEC are highly beneficial to the people. But, all jokes aside, if the government does not take responsibility for the lives of its citizens soon, it may not just be Lahore going the way of the French frog.
