ISLAMABAD, April 10: With the government hesitant to release funds, major activities of the Pakistan Environment Protection Agency (Pak-EPA) have come to a stand still.

No progress has been made in over half a dozen projects, including one funded by foreign assistance, after the last democratic government of Pakistan Peoples Party squeezed the Agency’s funding.

According to sources, Pak-EPA was in need of approximately Rs200 million to get the ball rolling again, and had the planned projects been implemented and completed, they would have directly benefited the common man.

One of Pak-EPAs projects was the establishment of guidelines for Indoor Air Quality Survey in Islamabad. These guidelines would have played a major role in setting and identifying standards to control indoor pollution.

The project would have directly affected indoor air quality in government and private offices, homes, hotels, schools, hospitals and other indoor public places.

As part of this project, Pak-EPA was to assess the levels of exposures and identify health risk groups affected by indoor pollution, especially those with respiratory diseases. Additionally, Pak-EPA had also planned to devise recommendations on green architectural practices in the local construction industry.

Most of these projects, meant to make the environment safer and friendlier, were initiated around five to six years ago. However, since June 30 of last year, not a dime has been released to the organisation.

Director General Pak-EPA, Asif Shuja, has been pointing out how shortage of funds has become a limitation to finishing what the Agency had started six years ago, but to no avail.

Some of the other initiatives started by Pak-EPA include the establishment of the Geomatic Centre for Climate Change and Sustainable Development, National Biosafety Laboratories (NBL) to develop technical capacity needed to support the effective implementation of Genetically Modified Foods, National Bio-safety Centre (NBC) for effective regulation of Genetically Modified Organisms and their products and initiation of Environmental Education in Schools through Roaming Teachers.

However, probably the most important Pak-EPA project to suffer a set back from lack of funds was one of its flagship projects, the Environment Monitoring System (EMS). The EMS had been designed to monitor the quality of air citizens inhaled and the water they consumed in major cities of the country.

Established with assistance from the Japanese government, the EMS was one of the most ambitious ventures and suffered the most. Its staff, nearly two dozen scientists and chemists, specialising specifically in the field of environment, went months without salaries until gradually they started exploring greener pastures.

Documents available with Dawn show that the Japanese government had started showing concerns about the future of the project and in not-so-many words urged to make it operational again. It had also offered additional training for the project's staff.

When inquired, an official in the Planning Commission revealed that the necessary funds were simply not available. However, the Planning Commission did ask the Pak-EPA to prioritise certain projects for which some funding could be provided, to keep the most important initiatives going.

However, to the displeasure of the Ministry of Climate Change and Pak-EPA, what the Planning Commission was offering was less than half of the Rs200 million roughly needed to bring all its projects back on track.