Lahore on top among most polluted cities

LAHORE : With an Air Quality Index (AQI) of 186, the provincial metropolis ranked on top of the ten most polluted cities in the world here on Saturday.

Data collected from IQ Air website revealed that Lahore, Pakistan was top of the list with the AQI of 186, Delhi, India was on second with AQI of 172 and Dhaka, Bangladesh was third with AQI of 157.

Rest of the top ten cities included Kathmandu, Nepal (AQI 155), Batam, Indonesia (AQI 153), Kuwait City, Kuwait (AQI 135), Manama, Bahrain (AQI 121), Lima, Peru (AQI 102), Hanoi, Vietnam (AQI 99) and Dakar, Senegal (AQI 97).

On the other hand, the city witnessed a hazy day and many citizens while talking with the scribe complained about irritation in throat, burning of eyes and difficulty in breathing.

The citizens appealed the Chief Minister Punjab Maryam Nawaz to ban all kind of ongoing construction activities in the city for the next two months as rising dust was the major source of PM2.5, which last year was named as fugitive dust by the Environmental Protection Department (EPD).

The Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz was very pertinent to take advance measures to tackle Smog but the situation showed that the advance measures taken by the Punjab government were not enough or not result-oriented to stop the accumulation of Smog over the main cities of the province.

Sources in EPA claimed that use of substandard fuel such as plastic and rubber especially in cottage industry around Bund Road was contributing a lot in increasing the smog. They said the EPA was not taking effective measures to tackle this issue and just eye-washing measures were being taken.

Sources further added that vehicular pollution was also one of the major contributor of the Smog but no strict action was being taken against smoke-emitting vehicles.

Similarly, LDA and other institutions were doing patchwork of roads on the directions of the Chief Minister Punjab in Lahore due to which movement of heavy machinery was a routine.

They claimed that most of the heavy vehicles owned by public departments such as LWMC, Wasa, LDA, MCL, C&W etc lacked fitness certificates and were never checked by the traffic police and transport department.

When contacted, EPA spokesperson said the department was taking all measures to tackle Smog. He said a large number of brick kilns were demolished while a ban was also imposed on the movement of uncovered sand/mud trollies across the province.

He claimed that traffic pollution, stubble burning and smog coming from India were the main reasons, which should be taken care effectively. Over a question about artificial rain, he said the department has not given any such proposal to the government.