LAHORE: The Punjab government has decided to stop playing tricks with the Lahore High Court (LHC) on smog and planned to explain the capacity constraints instead of hushing them up on flimsy excuses, said sources.
According to well-placed sources, Senior Member Board of Revenue (SMBR) Punjab Zahid Akhtar Zaman presided over a meeting the other day to express his heart on the issue.
He said he had convened the meeting with a heavy heart as farmers have no option but to burn stubbles to clean their fields for paddy cultivation.
The sources said the SMBR pointed out that the Agriculture department has only 65 harvesters which would take seven and a half months to remove stubbles in case farmers are stopped from burning stubbles to prepare land for the next crop. So, what option the farmers have in such a critical situation on ground, he asked the participants of the meeting.
According to him, a notification has been issued to patwaris to impose fines against the violators but all the First Information Reports (FIRs) have been lodged against farmers with small holdings. Not a single FIR has been registered against any big landlord till date, he stressed. As a result, he added, the administration was annoying a large community of farmers through their ill-designed policies.
The SMBR said misuse of the said notification was also being reported from across the province as unscrupulous elements among patwaris are extorting poor farmers.
Also, he said, the kiln operators were also paying Rs 10,000 to field staff and keep operating throughout the night. Therefore, the air quality index becomes pathetic in early morning hours because all the furnace factories keep burning tyres and old batteries throughout the night after greasing the palms of field staff of the environment protection agency, which has no sufficient staff to carry out operation against the violators.
He posed a question that what the Punjab administration can do in a situation when it has no alternative to deal with the situation.
According to the sources, the SMBR has proposed to apprise the LHC about the situation on ground while setting a target for the next year to improve deficiencies of all the relevant departments before letting the field staff to exploit the LHC-led official orders and notifications.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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