Punjab Environment Protection Department (EPD) has reneged on its own promise and violated court orders regarding its central laboratory’s responsibility to measure pollution levels in the province.
The EPD promised the Lahore High Court on December 14, 2016, to make its laboratory operational within four months after highly dense smog engulfed the provincial capital on November 2 last year.
Numerous petitions were filed in the LHC regarding uncontrolled pollution in Lahore and other parts of the Punjab following the smog build up. Petitioners contended that Lahore was becoming one of the most polluted cities in the country and that public functionaries had been negligent of their duties as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had been functioning without a central laboratory.
The LHC ordered the EPD to look into the matter, to which EPD replied that pollution on the province would be gauged after the establishment of its central laboratory for which the department required funding.
Punjab’s chief secretary then released funds worth Rs 388 million for the laboratory but to no avail.
Sources revealed that the EPA already had modern and state of the art laboratories at its headquarters in Lahore and seven other districts. “Despite having sufficient laboratories and skilled staff, EPA officials deceived the LHC and demanded more funds to establish a central laboratory,” sources said, adding that the laboratories required a very small amount of funds to be made fully functional compared to the Rs 388 million that the EPA received.
Sources further said that some officials in the EPA wanted to pretend that the present laboratory equipment was substandard and its staff insufficient, despite having the most competent, experienced, and skilled staff.
The EPA’s laboratory in Lahore was established through the help of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) which not only provided state of the art equipment but also trained EPA’s staff.
Sources claimed that EPA officials had intentionally neglected the maintenance of laboratory equipment so that they can demand more funds by labelling the equipment provided by JICA substandard. They said that despite receiving new funds, the EPA had failed to purchase five new air pointers (equipment to test environmental samples) which it claimed were necessary to measure pollution.
“The EPA had everything and the demand for additional funds was only for embezzlement,” they said, adding that in the past the EPA procured some equipment for which an enquiry was ongoing with the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
When contacted, EPA spokesman Naseem ur Rehman Shah he was unable to comment on the development regarding the agency’s central laboratory, saying that he did not know enough about the matter.
Speaking with Pakistan Today, EPA Monitoring Lab and Implementation (ML&I) Director Tauqeer Qureshi said that the central and other labs would be functional within the next 10 days. He said that the major problem was a lack of staff, which had now been recruited, enabling work to start by next week.
