SWABI: The district administration has closed several stone crushing plants in Swabi, telling the owners to get ‘no objection certificate’ from Environmental Protection Agency, according to sources.

They said that the owners of the stone crushing plants must get NOC from EPA otherwise they would not be allowed to continue their work.

The reasons behind the closure of the plants could not be known immediately.

However, some of the officials said that the owners of plants were told to get NOC due to pollution hazard created by their units.

Sources said that the action was taken on the directive of provincial government and all crushing plants were closed except those, who got NoC from EPA earlier.

They said that a number of plant owners had visited the office of EPA but returned frustrated and perplexed.

Published in Dawn, January 9th, 2018