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LAHORE, March 23: The Punjab government has responded ‘poorly’ to certain Lahore High Court judgments aimed at cleaning Lahore of air, noise and smoke pollution by way of formulating standards on ambient air, emission and fuel by the end of the current year.
The deadline given by the LHC for the elimination of two-stroke rickshaws from the entire city was six months from September 2006, the day when the judgment was announced.
The court had directed the government that motorcycle rickshaws, wagons and old and rickety buses should be phased out by the end of 2007 and four-stroke CNG motor cabs be introduced across the city within two years, besides imposing an immediate ban on the registration of new motorcycle rickshaws.
The LHC announced the judgment on two identical writ petitions and the provincial government and the City District Government had held out an assurance that both of them would be able to meet the deadline.
The petitions were filed by advocate Mansoor Ali Shah in 1997 with a submission that pollution in the city had reached a level that the life of all the citizens, whose number he said was around eight million, were exposed to severe health hazards in the presence of an ‘alarming’ proportion of carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen oxide and organic vapours.
The LHC judgment also quoted that vehicular emissions were 90 per cent of the total annual emissions. It said that vehicles plying in the city were emitting 25 times more of the permitted carbon monoxide, 20 times of hydrocarbons and 3.6 times of nitrous oxides in grams per kilometer.
It said that the average carbon monoxide presence in different places in the city air was 50 parts per minute which was much above the level of the standards which the National Environmental Quality Standards had established and, as such, this level of emission was in conflict with the national standard.
The LHC constituted a 16-member Lahore Clean Air Commission on Jan 24, 2003, with Dr Pervez Hasan its chairperson and advocate Mansoor Ali Shah the coordinator.
The commission was able to invite foreign initiative and the Asian Development Bank, the Clean Air Initiatve, Manile (The Philippines) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to organise an international seminar in Lahore on May 20, 2005, for the purpose of formulating different environmental standards.
The seminar recommended ambient air quality standards, air quality standards, air quality planning, emission and fuel standards, standards for public transport and auto rickshaws in addition to an entire monitoring system keeping in view the requirements of the city. Periodic inspection of all vehicles was made mandatory. The court also issued a direction for the establishment of a ‘green fund’ with the help of a bank which should provide soft loans and offer other incentives for clean fuel and vehicles.
The City District Government and all the Punjab government departments concerned were represented at the seminar. Subsequently all of them, through separate reports submitted before the Lahore High Court, assured it that they would implement the recommendations of the seminar in letter and spirit to eliminate two-stroke rickshaws, rickety buses and wagons by Dec 31, 2007. They even went beyond the scope of the writ petitions to assure the court that all the public transport would be converted to CNG.
FOLLOW-UP: The Punjab government established a green fund in collaboration with a bank which is providing interest-free loans up to 70 per cent of the price of a CNG rickshaw. The government also banned the plying of two-stroke auto rickshaws on The Mall. The government also placed a ban on the import and manufacture of such an auto cab. This is all the provincial government and the CDG have done so far.
The government had committed before the court that the plying of two-stroke rickshaws on other city roads, including Jail Road, Allama Iqbal Road and the Canal Road, would also be banned.
Mansoor Ali Shah told Dawn that besides The Mall, the entry of two-stroke rickshaws in the Cantonment areas had also been banned. Answering a question, he said no air standards had been formulated and even the relevant data was not available.
The CDG on the other hand says the production of CNG rickshaws is far below the requirement of the city where commuters need some 60,000 of them and their existing number is around 5,000. “This is the major reason why the restriction has not been extended to other city roads,” it says.
A senior CDG officer says the Pakistan Engineering Board and the Pakistan Standard Quality Control have been approached to work out air ambient standards and approve the elimination of two-stroke rickshaws from Lahore. He admitted that the CDG had so far not been able to collect the data of motorcycle rickshaws. His ‘rough estimate’ was around 17,000.
As for poorly maintained and rickety buses, he said that a new law had been enforced to revamp the city public transport across the province. According to him, about 800 buses were operating on 30 city routes although the requirement was more than 4,000. Inducting CNG buses, he said, was not possible for the time being because a leading manufacturer had refused to accept the offer. As for their import, he said it seemed difficult because of the price and heavy import duty.
The CDG officer said that total elimination of wagons was not possible till CNG buses operating in the city were sufficient in number.
