Daily Times

LAHORE: The opposition criticising the Punjab government for its failure to curb heavy smog in the province has suggested distribution of smog protection masks among schoolchildren to save them from diseases, as already some causalities have been reported due to this environmental issue.

On this demand, a legislator of the main opposition party in the Punjab Assembly – Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) – Malik Taimur Masood also filed a resolution in the Punjab Assembly Secretariat on Monday in which he urged Shehbaz Sharif-led government to take measures to control smog and the diseases spreading by it.

In the resolution, Malik Taimur Masood said that due to the heavy blanket of smog all over the province, the routine life of people had been disturbed and smiling faces of children were shattered. He also added that people, especially the children, were getting throat infections, fever and other serious diseases by the reason of heavy smog.

Masood said that the provincial Environment Protection Department had totally failed to control smog, while the government had also not considered the demand of the people to announce interim holidays in schools till the end of this smog season that is being predicted to continue for a couple of weeks.

He also criticised the government and the environment department for not taking any precautionary measures against heavy smog. Following the seriousness of the environmental issue, he also suggested the government in the resolution that it should release orders to distribute smog masks among the pupils of all public and private schools across the province.

Talking to the media, the mover of the resolution also said that several causalities had been reported in the province by the reason of smog but the government had not taken any serious and sound measure to deal with it. He said that only seminars were being arranged by the ministry concerned on the issue, but nothing practical was done in this regard.

Published in Daily Times, November 7^th 2017.