Wisal Yousafzai
PESHAWAR: As every year on 22nd World Earth Day was observed across the Globe and this year the theme of the day was to “End Plastic Pollution”.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on a number of occasions had announced that it would end polyethylene shopping bags across KP but still that announcement for the last five years no implementation was done.
Talking to The Frontier Post Environmental Protection Assistant Director Hidayat informed that EPA has close coordination with the government on plastic shopping bags but as the issue has been pending in Peshawar High Court.
He further added that EPA has already taken all shopkeepers and industrialists in confidence on use of paper bags instead of polyethylene shopping bags, adding that they also distributed some bags in citizen as well as in shopkeepers for clean environment.
He informed that so far many shopkeepers were fined by Environmental Protection Assistant for not using the bags provided by the government, adding that Environmental Protection Assistants were taking all steps to create awareness among the people against use of the use polyethylene bags for better environment.
Dr. Shafiq ur Rehman an environmentalist and former professor in Environment department at University of Peshawar said that water pollution is the cause of plastic.
He further added that every day thousands of plastic bags were using in Peshawar and other cities of Pakistan, adding that it mostly affected the derange system and because of that when rain most of the areas of Peshawar were full of water.
He further informed that totally bane on plastic cannot be possible because most of the things were made from plastic like blood bags etc , adding that there are some things like which were use one time like plastic bags which should not be use.
He further added that thousands of workers and industries associated with plastic business in the country but if we just create awareness among the people for using poly thane bags for shopping then it will create change and clean the environment.
On the other hand because of BRT project dust has been everywhere in Peshawar which causes chest and other disease.
Assistant Director Environmental Protection Assistant Dedar Khan said that they were so far many time advice the Bus Rapid Transit project contractors to use water and clean the environment but still no action was taken on their direction.
