PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench on Thursday summoned the provincial secretaries of industries and local government department and district nazim and deputy commissioner of Buner for explaining their positions about earlier court orders asking them to tal
The order was issued by the `green bench` comprising Justice Yahya Afridi and Justice Qaiser Rasheed, which fixed Nov 8 for the next hearing of cases related to environmental pollution.

The bench, called as green bench as it deals with environment related cases, directed that the secretaries of industries and local government departments and the district nazim and deputy commissioner should appear in person to explain why so far, they had failed in controlling the marble units involved in environmental pollution.

Lastyearthe bench had ordered temporary closure of 45 marbleunits in the said district for noncompliance with the environmental protection orders (EPO) of the provincial Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The EPA had filed an application under the Environmental Protection Act saying there`re hundreds of marble units in Buner district, which cause water and air pollution.

The EPA`s director general had told the bench that in order to control environmental pollution in the district, the EPA constructed a model of settling tanks in one of those units, while the rest were asked to replicate it. He had stated that their monitoring teams had visited 256 marble units and had found that most of those had not set up settling tanks in accordance with their directives.

Advocate FM Sabir appeared for local government department and stated that the government had planned to establish a marble city in Buner which would be in accordance with modern day requirements and would also be addressing environment issue.

The bench observed that themarble city was a future plan and the court was interested in knowing why the relevant officers had so far not stopped the existing units from environmental degradation.

Meanwhile, the bench also heard a writ petition filed by Peshawar based lawyers, Ghulam Shoaib Jally and Hamad Hussain Yousafzai, seeking directions from the court to give deadline to the government and the agencies concerned to take action on war footing against all sorts of pollution.

The bench directed the Peshawar district nazim, Muhammad Asim, to hold a meeting of officials concerned and finalise a report about how to tackle growing pollution in the provincial capital and submit the same to the court.

The bench directed that the said meeting should also be attended by the EPA`s DG, Peshawar deputy commissioner, general manager of Water and Sanitary Services Peshawar (WSSP), sanitary supervisor of Cantonment Board Peshawar, executive engineer of communication and works department, and the petitioners.

About the issue of burning ofsolid waste by the CBP, which was contributing to air pollution, Dr Bashir stated that the board had stopped that practice but it was on temporary basis and needed permanent solution.

Dr Bashir stated that EPA had identified around 92 spots in Peshawar which were contributing to environmental pollution. He added that these spots included some of the industries in Hayatabad Industrial Estate, coal storages, etc and the Peshawar deputy commissioner had been asked to take action against them.

The general manager (projects) WSSP, Attaullah Khan informed the bench that they had acquired land measuring 540 kanals at Badabher for solid waste disposal and an amount of Rs173 million had already been paid in that regard.

The petitioners said a recent report of World Health Organisation revealed that Peshawar was the sixth most polluted city across the world. They said unfortunately, Peshawar city had long been polluted though different departments had been established to tackle pollution.