In view of the growing public concerns regarding air environmental degradation of the urban and rural areas of the Sindh province, the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) is planning to conduct an extensive air quality assessment survey of the whole province through its regional offices and with the help of certified private laboratories.
Spokesperson of Sindh Government and Advisor to CM Sindh on Law, Environment, Climate Change, and Coastal Development Barrister Murtuza Wahab has already directed the SEPA to come up with actual facts and figures regarding the air environment of the province so that viable corrective measures may be taken to improve the situation.
In this regard, the Director General SEPA has recently conducted a deliberative meeting of the representatives of the certified environmental laboratories working in Sindh to take them on board in this exercise which will be commenced once all pre-survey arrangements are made accordingly.
All the regional offices of SEPA including, Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Larkana, and Mirpurkhas and their subsequent District Incharges have also been alerted in this regard to earmark their human resources to conduct the subject activity in a befitting manner.
The air quality of Karachi will be monitored with equally extensive efforts as quite recently a number of reports regarding the fall in its ambient air quality spaciously appeared in the print and electronic media. Therefore, it is expedient to monitor its air emissions and to analyze them scientifically to eventually check their deviation from standards in vogue.
In Karachi, the air quality of more than 100 locations will be monitored based on different aspects like rush hours, industrial surroundings, depositions of smoke pockets, landfill sites, highways, wind corridors, traffic congestion areas, heavy industrial complexes, coal storage, and handling facilities, etc.
Likewise, owing to the likelihood of smog pollution in rural areas where a large number of brick kilns operate in different pockets and their emissions aggravate the air pollution by mixing up with fog in the winter season. Consequently, it affects visibility while driving more particularly in the morning hours. Therefore, air monitoring of rural areas will also extensively be conducted to examine if the smog is within the permissible limit or not.
It may be recalled, that SEPA regional offices have recently conducted vigorous monitoring of brick kilns in most of the districts and strictly warned their owners to convert their brick baking procedure from conventional methods to zig-zag technology.
The DG SEPA has reaffirmed its pledge to continue taking action without any discrimination against all such elements found involved in causing air pollution, which is apart from many other, one of the main causes of respiratory diseases and deaths all over the world.