March 14, 2005

Islamabad: Consumer Rights Commission of Pakistan (CRCP), in collaboration with Global Environment Facility (GEF), United Nation Development Programme (UNDP) organized a stakeholders consultative meeting on “Issues in Implementation of National Environmental Quality Standards (NEQS) on Industrial and Municipal Water” in Islamabad. Mr. Amin Aslam Khan Malik, Minister of State for Environment chaired the meeting. A large number of stakeholders from parliament, industry and civil society organizations (CSOs) participated in the meeting. It highlighted the importance of an effective and dynamic working relationship between parliamentarians and other stakeholders, especially CSOs, industry and municipal authorities to ensure an effective and realistic implementation of NEQS on industrial and municipal water.

Mr. Malik Amin Aslam spoke about the steps taken by the government towards environment preservation and NEQS implementations. He told that it was always easy to enact laws but difficult to implement and it was the case with environmental laws. “We are not against development but we want sustainable development and that is not possible without healthy environment”, he told. He warned that under the new WTO regime, products of those industries would get discouraged in international market who are not complying with NEQS.

Mrs. Farzeen Ahmad Sarfraz, Chairperson National Assembly Standing Committee (NASC) on Environment, briefed about the bottlenecks in implementation of NEQS. Replying to a question by Mrs. Huma Zubair, Quality Controller Murree Brewery, she said that there was no question of relaxing standards as they were already meeting only the minimum requirements of international bodies.

Mr. Mukhtar Ahmad Ali, Executive Coordinator CRCP, briefed about the nature and objectives of GEF project being implemented by CRCP. He said that this project aimed to engage parliamentarians, especially members of Standing Committees of both the Houses. There is quite a lot of work in research and with community; however, this has not been mainstream effectively into national policies on environment. He said that the parliamentarians could benefit from the experiences and work of CSOs on environment. He also spoke about the inefficiency of Pakistan Environment Protection Council (PEPC), as it could not meet twice a year since 2001 as provided in the Pakistan Environment Protection Act, 1997 and lack of political will to ensure compliance with NEQS on industrial and municipal water.

Mr. Asif S. Khan, DG Pakistan Environment Protection Agency (PEPA), spoke about the unprepared grounds for implementation of NEQS on industrial and municipal water. He highlighted the difficulties faced by the PEPA in implementation of NEQS. He also emphasized the need for a demand driven strategy in implementation of NEQS.

Mr. Nayyar Bukhari, Member NASC on Environment, emphasized the need of involving community at grassroots level to ensure implementation of NEQS. He told that CSOs could play a paramount role in this regard by creating awareness about the looming environmental hazards owing to non compliance of NEQS.

Dr. Rozina Tufail, Member NASC on Environment pointed out that government had not enough resources to take all the initiatives required to tackle the problem of environmental degradation. She said that community’s involvement was essential to seek full compliance with NEQS.