HYDERABAD, Dec 23: The district council called for devolving Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to district level and bringing it under control of EDOs under the Sindh Local Government Ordinance (SLGO) 2001.

The council which met here on Saturday also urged to make district government's law department vibrant after hearing a monitoring committee report on law, which pointed out that the district’s law department was a one man show and had to make do with meagre resources.

Committee chairman Mohammad Ali Gohar said that the EDO had no deputy, clerical staff, computers and other accessories although he was representing the district in 43 constitutional petitions, 13 review applications and 249 civil appeals and suits whereas the number of decided cases was 136.

He said that the Environmental Protection Agency was among the decentralised group of offices and was yet to be devolved as per relevant provisions of SLGO.

He said that some complaints about environmental pollution were sent to EPA office in Hyderabad but an official claimed that the agency was working under Pakistan Environmental Protection Act (PEPA) 1997, which had its own rules and regulations and had no concern with SLGO 2001.

He said that the EPA was unfriendly towards EDOs and made people to run from pillar to post to get their problems resolved.

The PEPA 1997 needed to be amended to remove the conflict of authority that existed between two offices, he urged.

Major part of the report was devoted to appreciation of EDO (law), Shamsuddin Sehto and poor state of affairs in his one room office set up in Civil Defence building.

Mr Gohar praised the EDO for saving funds in different litigations, amounting to millions of rupees which would otherwise have to be paid due to negligence of outgoing legal adviser of Hyderabad Development Authority (HDA).

Convenor Zafar Rajput observed that all the reports of monitoring committees should be presented either in Sindhi or Urdu languages though some quotations could be defined in English wherever needed.

Mr Rajput administered oath to three members of the council, Saleem Jahejo, Mujeeb Qureshi and Ishtiaque Rajput, despite objections from Mehboob Abro.

He observed that the three had earlier taken oath of the office of union council nazims while the present oath pertained to their capacity as members of this council.

Mr Abro, a member of law committee, said that he did not agree law committee's report because it was not presented before other members of the committee. The report made no mention of false cases registered against council members, he added.

Q. Mohammad Hakim, Rashid Khan, Dr. Arif Razmi and Javed Kardar hailed the monitoring committee's report and said that no such report was presented in the council’s last tenure. It was however encouraging that reports had now started pouring, they said.

The council resumed debate over a resolution put forward by Rana Siddiqui on solid waste management with Dr Arif Razmi calling for introducing the system, common in developed countries, in Hyderabad.

He called for curbing the practice of dumping garbage in landfill sites and said it caused environmental pollution and turned the sub-soil water brackish.

Council secretary informed that the council passed 58 resolutions, which were sent to different departments but it received no response from any.

The convener suggested that any member should table a resolution seeking explanation from departments concerned as to why they had not implemented the resolutions.

The convenor directed the EDOs to provide information required of them to monitoring committees else the bodies would remain ineffective.