The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were criticized during the permanent session of the National Assembly on climate change and the session of the Environmental Coordinate on Wednesday while the province is faced with record floods.
MNA Malik Awais Jakhar castigated the NDMA for incompetence and asked for answers in the name of her district – Layyah.
“The committees have been trained for a year and a half [but] Has a result produced? “He asked. Jakhar also criticized the NDMA for not having appeared before the permanent committee despite several summons.
This year, torrential rains flooded the rivers, with high wood alerts emitted by the NDMA.
“The city of Layah is protected by an embankment. If it breaks, my city drowns,” said Jakhar, describing the lack of funds. He deplored that all funds are redirected to larger cities while the small cities of southern Punjab have drowned.
The NDMA has not even included Layyan in its most affected list, Jakhar told the Standing Committee asking members to tell him who to call for help. “People [in Layyah] are affected by the floods, they bring bodies to boats. “”
On deforestation, pollution
The permanent committee also addressed the problem of vehicles and deforestation emitting smoke.
“Crusher machines and marble quarries in Haripur cause mass destruction,” said Shaista Khan, member of the committee.
The secretary of the Ministry of Climate Change Informed the Committee that the capital Development Authority (CDA) has made compulsory for each house in Islamabad now includes a harvesting of rainwater during construction.
Meanwhile, the Secretary of the Islamabad Transport Authority Kamran Cheema said that efforts had been made to stop vehicles emitting smoke to try to fight SMOG in the region.
However, the committee refused to accept this, the members highlighting the rules of the EPA trained in 2008 and the subsequent failures to apply them.
The meeting concluded that EPA had no adequate equipment to regulate vehicle emissions.
Cheema then assured members of members that more equipment had been purchased and that the EPA began to implement its rules.
The committee observed that of the 1.7 million vehicles recorded in Islamabad, emission tests were only carried out on 876.
The president of the climate change and environmental coordination committee, the chairman of the permanent committee Munaza Hassan, noted: “Next year, the country plans to receive 22% additional precipitation”.
She was unleashed to the inhabitants of Islamabad declaring that they can afford “808 million houses of rupees, but cannot buy three trash cans?”
It also castigated the excessive use of plastic and observed that even aid on delivery to the victims of the floods includes thousands of plastic bottles.
Hassan ordered the members of the committee and the other officials of the meeting to make private companies compulsory to install machines to collect plastic bottles. “I have the impression that the whole country will end up underwater,” she deplored.
