KARACHI:National Forum for Environment & Health (NFEH) has welcomed the recent ruling of Supreme Court for stopping offloading of imported coal at Karachi Port Trust (KPT) and banning open storage of the coal anywhere in the city within six weeks.
In a press statement, NFEH President Naeem Qureshi said that such favourable decisions by the apex judiciary would go a long way in safeguarding environment of the city that had been facing serious threats owing to various unchecked and alarming phenomena.
He said that apex judiciary had to step into saving the situation from utter crash and to safeguard health and lives of the citizens when other relevant authorities had been doing nothing except acting as a silent spectator while deterioration in environment of the city continued unabated.
He said that offloading of cargo vessels carrying imported coal at KPT and subsequent open storage of coal at the yard situated much nearer to residential areas in Clifton, had emerged as a major threat to environment of the city.
The NFEH president said that relevant authorities, including the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency didn’t take any concrete action to stop this practice that had emerged as one of the biggest threats to environment and health of the concerned citizens of Karachi.
In such a situation, the concerned effected quarters were left with no option other than to move the court to get due relief from the apex judiciary and that has been rightly and timely granted in order to protect the city’s environment, said Qureshi.
He said that a clear-cut policy framework and binding guidelines should be adopted by the authority of Port Qasim for offloading, handling, and storing imported coal there in view of the ruling of apex judiciary.
NFEH president said that such a policy should be finalized only after consulting the industrialists having businesses and industries in Port Qasim industrial zone area.
He said that the industrialists of Port Qasim had already become much wary of environment of the area becoming highly vitiated due to increased handling, storage, and movement of imported coal at the port and nearby area.
While hailing the Supreme Court’s ruling, Qureshi said that apex judiciary had emerged as the ultimate hope for the citizens in safeguarding the environment when the government and all the other authorities had become idle and doing nothing to reverse the constant damage being done to the environment.