Punjab aims to get tough on air pollution

Pakistan's Punjab province - the nation's most populous - has announced measures to tackle air pollution, but some activists doubt they will have any impact, citing the tardy progress of previous steps to improve the environment. Already among the highest in the world, air pollution levels in Pakistan's largest cities, many of which are in Punjab, continue to climb, raising serious health concerns. The Economic Survey of Pakistan 2004 pinpoints vehicle and industrial emissions as the main air pollutant. "The average compounded growth of vehicles in Pakistan is about 12 percent a year, and over the last two decades the total number of motor vehicles on the road has jumped from 0.8 million to almost 5 million," the annual report said. It explained that motorcycles and rickshaws, due to their two-stroke engines, are the most inefficient in burning fuel and contribute most to emissions. Rickshaws have more than doubled in number, while motorcycles and scooters have increased seven-fold over the past 20 years. The Punjab government says two-stroke vehicles will be illegal in the province after 31 December this year. The Punjab environment secretary, Riaz Bashir, told IRIN that the use of vehicles with two-stroke engines had been banned in many countries around the world. "Vehicle-based environmental pollution has already reached alarming levels and further delay in bringing it under control could have disastrous effects," he warned. According to a World Bank report, air pollution causes 168,000 premature deaths annually in Pakistan. "Urban air pollution causes average annual damages in the range of US $369 million to the Pakistani exchequer," it said. A study carried out by the Ministry of Environment says about 16.28 million people (40 percent of the total urban population) of Pakistan are at a health risk due to air pollution because the province does not comply with World Health Organization (WHO) ambient air quality standards. The Environment Protection Department (EPD) is trying to soften the blow by the provision of loans to owners of two-stroke vehicles to replace their engines with natural gas burning units after the ban. It says the ban will help cut pollution in big cities such as Lahore, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi and Multan. Such a ban exists in the federal capital, Islamabad, and has gone some way to improving air quality there. But previous EPD campaigns have achieved little, activists say. In 1998, the EPD drive against vehicles emitting smoke and creating noise only succeeded in imposing fines on the owners of 150,000 two-stroke vehicles and impounding 400 by the time it ended in 2001. In last year's campaign against smoke-emitting vehicles, the environment department's mobile squads fined more than 8,000 private and 500 government vehicles in the cities of Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Multan and Rawalpindi. Head of the mobile squads, Nasimur Rahman, told IRIN they launched the campaign on the directions of the Supreme Court, which acted in May last year to try to reduce environmental degradation in Pakistan, especially in the Punjab. But the EPD lacks resources, including trained staff and scientific instruments to measure emission levels. According to a survey recently conducted by the department, more than 70 percent of the public and private vehicles in Lahore are emitting excessive smoke and noise. Punjab Transport Minister Rana Shamshad Ahmad Khan told the Punjab Assembly that the government intended to buy new equipment to test vehicles. But some people laugh the whole campaign off. "The government has not succeeded in even enforcing its ban on smoking in public offices and places," Irshad Hussain, a broadcaster and environmental activist, told IRIN. "The major problem is lack of will," he said. The problem appears to run even deeper. There is no viable plan for the phasing out of about 200,000 vehicles (according to EPD figures) running on two-stroke engines in the province. The minister says the two-stroke-engine vehicles will be sent to smaller cities. Worst hit will be drivers of ubiquitous three-wheeler scooters or auto-rickshaws which will be made obsolete by the ban. "It is easy to order a ban but the government should have arranged loans for us so that we can buy new vehicles. After all we were providing a service to the public," Akram, an auto rickshaw driver, told IRIN. He has been driving a rickety, smoky vehicle for five years. A new vehicle would cost nearly US $2,500 dollars, a sum he could never afford. Hiring a vehicle will cost him two dollars a day and there are days when he can barely scrape up three dollars. He fears that owners of three-wheelers which comply with the new regulations will raise the daily rent. Long-suffering commuters will also have to pay more. "The drivers who buy new four-stroke rickshaws will charge more," Shazia Ali told IRIN. She commutes to and from her office by rickshaw. "Travelling by rickshaw was already too costly," she said. "The trouble is they are looking for quick fix solutions when what is needed is a comprehensive technology plan including traffic management and pollution control," Irshad Hussain said.