Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Instead of relocating the harmful steel mills from the industrial area of I-9 and I-10 for the last 15 years, the relevant departments only sealed three furnaces in recent days; whereas all the mills of such a kind are already included in the negative list prepared by the Pak-EPA in 2001.

Following the Supreme Court’s orders, the Pakistan Environment Protection Agency (Pak-EPA), the Capital Development Authority (CDA) and the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) administration conducted an operation against the owners of the furnaces on Thursday and sealed three steel mills for the next three months.

The court has directed to seal the steel mills on the several complaints made by local residents and taking notice of the news which appeared in a section of the media regarding the massive pollution generated by the said steel mills in the area.

Earlier it was reported by Daily Times that a large number of steel mills had been working in sectors I-9 and I-10 for the last four decades as in the beginning these sectors were considered as an industrial sector in the master plan of the capital city.

Later on, the city managers had converted three quarters area of the said industrial sectors into residential sectors to accommodate the local people against their acquired properties. The decision to convert a major area of these industrial sectors into residential sectors was itself a blunder.

In 2001, the Pak EPA prepared a negative list of industries, in which it included factories harmful for environment and human health. Moreover, the list included the names of steel mills and declared them injurious for environment and strongly recommended their re-location.

In response to that list, the Capital Development Authority issued notices to the owners of plots in the industrial area and asked them to shift their factories outside the main city. The Capital Development Authority has also prepared a plan to allocate alternate land to the industries of I-9 and I-10 into the sector I-17, but it could not be materialised due to several reasons.

A former officer of the Authority’s industrial planning wing briefed Daily Times: “Although, the Authority had prepared a plan to re-locate the industries in the new sector I-17, but the Capital Development Authority failed to give a workable exit plan to erase the said industries from sectors I-9 and I-10.”

He said further; “We put a proposal to the higher ups of the Authority in 2011 that the Authority should allow change of land use in the industrial sector to compensate the owners of the industrial plots, but the authorities did not take it seriously.”

“If Capital Development Authority allow the plot owners to convert their plots for commercial use i.e. environmental friendly manufacturing units, multi-storeyed residential apartment buildings or shopping centres then the owner will easily move their factories outside the main city as it will help the factories’ owners to balance their losses as well as it will generate revenue for the CDA in the shape of commercial use charges,” he added.

Besides the Pak-EPA report, the Supreme Court directions and public demands, the Capital Development Authority higher ups failed to adopt a modus operandi to re-locate these harmful steel manufacturing units from the residential sector, which is a question mark on the planning and performance of the city managers.