Six industrial waste treatment plants in four big cities soon

Another six large industrial waste treatment plants will be installed soon in four major cities with financial assistance from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), officials said on Saturday. Three new plants will be located in Karachi with one each in Lahore, Sialkot and Faisalabad.
The ADB will provide around Rs 100 million assistance on soft terms for the project. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Director General Asif Shuja Khan said 17 such plants were already operating in different industrial areas of the country.
With the installation of new plants, which are larger than those already in operation, the treatment capacity would increase up to 60 per cent.
Shuja Khan said a feasibility report had already been finalised and certain remaining modalities would be sorted out soon through negotiations with the concerned industries. He said the EPA was also working on projects to reduce pollution related to tanneries, mostly sited in Punjab.
A sum of Rs 520 million was being spent on curtailing ill effects from the flow of waste material from tanneries. It was easier to set up waste treatment facility in an area having many industrial units located in close proximity, he said.
The EPA chief said old units working in several parts of the country pose a serious problem as they were working without any proper sewerage system.
He said that as a tangible incentive government has offered to bear up to 75 per cent of expenses on establishing a waste treatment plant. Moreover, EPA has launched a motivational programme to persuade industry owners to give priority to environmental protection in their planning and expansion.
In another move to control air pollution, monitoring cells would be set up in cities with Japanese financial aid under a special programme, he said. He said the number of vehicles run on CNG has been increasing with good effect on the environment. At present some 350 CNG stations were operating across the country.
The environment protection programme in Pakistan gained momentum in 1992 when an intensive programme was kicked off with the financial help of Dutch government, he added.