KARACHI: The Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) has disposed of, during the past three months, a total of 217 public complaints related to various types of environmental violations in different areas of the province.

A Sepa spokesman sharing details of the exercise here recently said that before their disposal, the complaints were technically and legally examined, paving the way for most appropriate action as per the provisions of the Sindh Environmental Protection Act 2014. This, he said, was to control all types of pollution for ensuring sustainable development in the province mentioning that environmental and legal aspects of 76 more complaints, of similar nature, were currently in the process of disposal.

“These are being duly examined so that could also be disposed of effectively in accordance with the environmental regulations of the province,” he said.

Of the 217 complaints, 112 were from the Karachi region, 24 each from Hyderabad and Sukkur, 14 from Mirpurkhas, 12 from Larkana and the remaining 31 from other parts of the province.

The Sepa spokesman said the participants in the Tuesday meeting of the Public Complaints Cell of the Sindh Environment, Climate Change and Coastal Development Department, chaired by Khan Mohammad Mahar, the provincial secretary for environment observed that the reported violations were mainly committed in the vicinities of towns and cities of the province.

Owing to lack of access of any appropriate monitoring over there, environmental violations were being committed openly in such places, commented one of the senior Sepa officials. In-charge of the Sepa Public Complaints Cell and its additional director general Waqar informed the meeting that usually a considerable time was required to examine each complaint from both technical and legal points of view.

The environment secretary was also informed that support of local police was mostly required for taking action to address public complaints in far-flung areas.

For ensuring the availability of police at stipulated time of action, they are to be informed well before time. Moreover, the availability of police at the time of Sepa’s action is subject to the abse­nce of any emergency situation in the jurisdiction of the police, said Waqar Halepoto.

Participants in the meeting were informed that for effective actions on public complaints regarding operations of illegal bricks and battery kilns besides sub-standard oil manufacturing police support was urgently required.

This was said to be besides the fact that legal action had been taken against several of these unauthorised units, but their numbers demanded much more and easy availability of police assistance.

The senior official said Sepa’s team assigned such tasks had to wait till the availability of a required number of policemen so as to undertake the urgently needed action. The non-availability of essential support delayed the action and that many of such complaints also rema­ined pending due to no fault of Sepa.

Those who attended the meeting included Deputy Secretary, Environment Department Tipu Sultan; Director of Sepa for Karachi Region Dr Ashique Langah; deputy directors Waris Gabol, Azhar Khan, Abdullah Magsi; Coordinator of the Complaint Cell of the department Agha Gul Muhammad; assistant directors Mubarik Ali, Mohammad Shoaib and Abdul Malik.

Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2020