RECORDER REPORT

KARACHI: Prof Dr Raza Mehdi of Department of Urban and Infrastructure Engineering of NED University of Engineering & Technology has said that commercial vehicles should go through fitness system to check their roadworthiness on annual basis without fail to curb the phenomena of pollution.

Speaking at a seminar on pollution-free transport which was organized by National Forum for Environment and Health (NFEH), he said that refineries and oil companies in the country mostly had built systems to produce fuel compliant with the European and international standards but similar infrastructure should also be evolved for commercial vehicles enabling them to meet the same compulsory global specifications.

He said that implementation of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project in the country should lead to construction of proper transportation and road networks and systems in the country including those for the purpose of mass transit within big cities.

Secretary of Oil Companies’ Advisory Council, Faisal Khalil said that commercial motor vehicles should be introduced in the market on urgent basis, having Euro-II compliant engines and systems as per the international vehicular standards.

He said that infrastructure should be built in cities for mass and goods’ transportation, which would meet the emissions and fuel specification set by the international community.

An environmental consultant belonging to EPC Pakistan, Saquib Ejaz Hussain said that as per the international standards, a metropolitan city like Karachi should have started the planning to build a mass transit system way back when its population had crossed the 10 million mark.

He said that Karachi had been witnessing annual growth rate of 4.5 per cent of registration and use of new motor vehicles in the city. “But neither roads of the city are vehicle-worthy nor our vehicles are roadworthy as in such a situation, the air and other forms of pollution is bound to increase in Karachi,” he said.

He said that diesel being used mostly by commercial transport carriers accounted for 54 per cent share in air pollution in the city.

He said that Karachi like any other developed city should have a constant system for monitoring of air quality, which would provide real time data of prevalence of pollutants in the air to the concerned quarters as the same data should be displayed on live basis on billboard systems on major thoroughfares of the city.

He said some latest data had indicated that in some of the busy vehicular and commercial corridors in the city, the prevalence of highly hazardous pollutants like Carbon Monoxide had become 240 times higher than allowable limits set by UN’s environmental standards.

NFEH President Naeem Qureshi said that governmental, concerned civil society organizations, stakeholders of trade and industry should sit together to find a way from the present environmental crisis the cities like Karachi had been facing.