Zartaj blames Opp’s Azadi March for Lahore smog

Minister of State for Climate Change Zartaj Gul has said that the pollution in Lahore is increasing due to the extra number of vehicles entering Lahore for Azadi March.

In a video posted on Twitter from Gul’s official account, the minister has termed all reports fake which claimed that Lahore has entered into the list of most polluted cities of the world.

She said that the company which has released this data wants the government to install their equipment for monitoring air pollution and is spreading misleading reports for the past two years.

“They take their equipment out for recording data when the traffic is dense and use these reports to spread panic”, the minister added.

Yesterday, the air quality monitoring station installed in US Consulate Lahore indicated that the Air Quality Index (AQI) of the city is near 469, while the threshold for hazardous levels of air quality is 300.

Moreover, the London-based non-governmental organisation, Amnesty International in a statement released to the media on Wednesday stated that the levels of air quality in the province has been rated “near unhealthy” to “very unhealthy” for most of the year.

The report also said that the Air Quality Index (AQI) in Lahore has reached 484 in the early morning. Meanwhile, EPA is still unable to show the actual picture of the scenario and is showing the unrealistic data in this regard.

The South Asia Campaigner at Amnesty International, Rimmel Mohydin has also urged the government to do more to adequately address such a severe public health crisis — one that endangers people’s health and even their lives”.