Import of injurious waste

Safe disposal of industrial, chemical, clinical and radioactive waste is one of the most serious challenges confronting the governments today. No doubt new technological advances, improved medical care and voluminous industrial production has greatly improved the quality of life over the last hundred years or so but their life-threatening side-effects are no less grave - and to a large extent hitherto overlooked. Of course, the prohibitive national laws and international conventions and protocols are aplenty. But their effective implementation is no where to be seen.
Perhaps, the gravity of the consequences resulting from this less-than-serious notice of the violations of laws and codes that are expected to deal with these challenges is as much hostage to the human avarice as to the realisation of their side-effects and Pakistan is no exception; here all of it is happening at the same time and on a much higher scale. What appeared in the media just over the past one week is indeed an eye-opener for any discerning mind. For one, unusually large quantity of ephedrine - much more than its established need for medicinal purposes - was imported by a syndicate, for no other apparent reason for its diversion and use as filler by heroin addicts. The case is now before the Supreme Court. For another, a newspaper report has brought to light how blatantly a mafia, hand in-glove with local Customs officials at Lahore dry port, imports hazardous clinical waste under the garb of PVC scrap. And no less enigmatically, the radioactive waste is being dumped at Baghal Chur, in DG Khan district by a scientific organisation unmindful of the local residents' lingering protests. How dangerous the clinical waste is, we in Pakistan must know by now know first hand - for the dengue epidemic that killed hundreds in Punjab last year broke out due to imported used tyres. Ephedrine is the poor man's heroin, a lethal drug addicted to by millions in Pakistan. And the side-effects of radiological waste, ask the Japanese who have spent some 600 billion US dollars to de-contaminate the area covered by radioactivity leaked from the Fukushima plant hit by tsunami last year.
Adulterated foodstuff, spurious medicines, and unchecked import of chemical and clinical waste - these are everyday happenings in our national life. The laws dealing with these challenges are of course there on the statute book but their implementation is almost non-existent. That some two dozen warehouses in the suburbs of Lahore are stuffed with huge quantities of clinical waste have been spotted by the concerned department is unbelievable. But now that this crime has been reported by the media it must be thoroughly investigated and responsibility squarely fixed. With Supreme Court now having its Green Bench, it is hoped the enforcing of national laws and international conventions dealing with the misuse and diversion of these wastes and dual-purpose substances would be quicker and stiffer. Let the Green Bench take suo motu notice of criminal act of importing the clinical waste imported via Lahore dry port. That some 250 containers carrying 'plastic waste' were stopped at the Karachi dry port but these reach Lahore, is the measure of the clout and reach of the mafia running this illegal business.