While cities across Punjab, including Lahore, grapple with severe air pollution and smog, they also face a shortage of environmental laboratories to monitor emissions from industrial units.
Factories and industrial units are required to adopt eco-friendly technology and monitor their emissions of smoke, water, waste, and noise.
Emission tests for these industrial units are typically conducted through private laboratories, with the resulting reports submitted to the Punjab Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other relevant authorities.
Dawar Hameed Butt, a public policy and environmental expert, highlighted that under the Pakistan Environmental Act 1997, all industrial units are mandated to engage in self-monitoring and reporting in compliance with smart regulations.
However, only 10 to 20 per cent of these units adhere to these guidelines. Butt emphasized that while certified environmental laboratories conduct gas and liquid emission tests, the current number of such laboratories is inadequate.
He suggested increasing the number of private environmental laboratories and improving their monitoring systems to prevent the issuance of falsified reports.
Presently, Punjab has only 14 private environmental laboratories, most of which have expired licenses. The Environmental Protection Agency appears uninterested in renewing these licenses, nor are new ones being issued.
The Urban Unit’s Sectorial Emission Inventory of Lahore 2023 indicates that industries contribute 9 per cent of Lahore’s air pollution.
Punjab hosts 17,857 industrial units, including 718 chemical and petroleum units, 6,324 engineering units, 3,750 food, drink, and tobacco factories, 1,808 leather, rubber, and plastic manufacturers, 934 paper units, and 387 non-metal and mineral factories.
Lahore Division has 560 registered industrial units, but the number of unregistered units, such as brick kilns and small-scale setups, runs into the thousands.
Industries are categorized based on their emissions, with category A industries required to submit emission reports monthly, category B every three months, and category C every six months. These reports are submitted to the EPA in accordance with their classification.
Dr. Ziaul Haq, Associate Professor at the National Research Laboratory for Climate Change, University of Punjab, stated that industrial units often use private laboratories for emissions testing and submit these reports to the government.
However, many reports from private laboratories are deemed unreliable due to collaboration between industry owners and the labs to produce tailored results. Dr. Haq urged the government to establish mobile environmental laboratories to conduct independent inspections across districts.
Muhammad Farooq, Deputy Director of the Laboratories Department at the Punjab EPA, explained that the establishment of environmental laboratories and renewal of their registrations requires recommendations from the Advisory Committee.
Approval is granted by the Director General of the EPA based on these recommendations. However, the formation of this advisory committee is still pending.
In the interim, a sub-committee of six departmental officers has been formed to address the establishment of new laboratories and the renewal of existing ones, with a decision expected soon.
