ISLAMABAD: The residents of industrial areas in 1-9 and I-10 sectors are in for a bad news as city managers seem to be in no mood to revive plans of moving industries to I-17 sector, according to a government strategy.
The plan to move 500 heavy and light industries from these two sectors to I-17 has been shelved back in August 2018 due to lack of funds. The above situation bears ample testimony to the city managers’ failure to protect the citizens from life-threatening and environmental pollution generated by the industries in I-9 and I-10 sectors.
The industries are making it hard for the dwellers of the I-9 sector to breathe and make them susceptible to. Due to unprecedented air pollution, the citizens are having lungs related diseases which should be a matter of concern for the authorities. “I’ve been living in I-10 for the past two decades and the authorities including the Environment Protection Agency and CDA treat this sector as if we don’t fall in Islamabad,” said Talha Ahmed, a resident of I-10.
“From water supply to maintenance of roads, we have been neglected. The industries established around I-9 and I-10 are slowly but certainly causing skin diseases, lung diseases and other ailments. It is about time that the city managers remove these industries from our midst and allow us to breathe in neat and clean environment,” he said.
It is pertinent to mention here that the 1-9 sector was only for the industry initially in the Islamabad Master Plan but the residential areas were developed in I-9 and I-10 because of lack of implementation of the original plan. The sector houses a number of private and public sector organisations and its offices and various public sector educational institutions, while the CDA weekly bazaar is also held there every Tuesday.
Besides a number of the industrial units, automobile workshops have also been established in the jurisdiction. Around 500 factories in the industrial estates are polluting the air and water in I/9, 204 are manufacturing units, including eight steel melting furnaces, 11 re-rolling mills, 25 flour mills, five oil and ghee mills, 31 marble cutting and polishing units and 23 metal working and engineering units, which either lack or have inadequate facilities for treatment of waste emissions.
However, a majority of the steel mills failed to install anti-pollution equipment while those installed were either not working or were only partially effective.
