Karachi : The National Forum for Environment and Health (NFEH) has urged the caretaker governments in the provinces to take immediate steps to speedily build industrial effluent treatment plants to protect freshwater reservoirs in the country as the past regimes unduly delayed such vital schemes.
The demand to this effect was made by the NFEH President, Naeem Qureshi, in a statement issued on Monday to mark World Food Day 2023 having the theme: “Water is life, water is food. Leave no one behind”.
He said the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UNO had very aptly chosen the theme for this year’s World Food Day to highlight the extreme vulnerabilities of underdeveloped countries including Pakistan where the safety of water reservoirs is constantly being threatened due to constant unchecked discharge of the industrial effluents.
“Take for instance the example of Karachi as being the economic capital and largest urban centre where its many industrial estates don’t have the essential service of combined effluent treat plants,” he said.
Resultantly, there is a constant discharge of thousands of gallons of untreated industrial waste daily polluting our water bodies and marine ecosystems, he said.
Qureshi said the situation had been so adverse that the relevant environmental officials didn’t even have the latest scientifically gathered data on pollutants harming the water reservoirs serving the urban centres in the country.
He lamented that past governments despite the availability of sufficient fiscal and technical resources had delayed completing the projects to build combined industrial effluent plants.
“The undue delay in this regard on the part of the past governments seems a clear case of criminal negligence in protecting the public health given that foreign donor agencies are always willing to fund such development projects aimed at safeguarding the water sources in the country,” he said.
The NFEH President also called upon the provincial governments to speedily build wastewater treatment and recycling projects to conserve the fast-depleting freshwater sources in the country.
“Similarly, municipal governments should adopt and impose laws aimed at penalising people and businesses involved in sheer wastage of freshwater given that we can’t afford any more carefree use of this precious natural resource whose sufficient availability is often threatened in the country,” he said.
He said the green cover should be increased in all the main urban centres using the treated wastewater to improve the environmental conditions.
He said that such measures aimed at water conservation should immediately be taken especially in the agricultural sector to save underprivileged countrymen in rural areas from severe droughts.
