LAHORE: A meeting was held in the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) committee room regarding anti-smog measures under the chairmanship of Punjab Relief Commissioner and Senior Member Board of Revenue (SMBR) Naveed Haider Shirazi.
Director General PDMA Faisal Farid, Secretary Revenue Mehr Shafqatullah Mushtaq, directors of PDMA, and representatives of transport, district administration, urban unit, traffic police and line departments were present.
The relief commissioner was briefed on the elimination of smog by the line departments.
Naveed Haider Shirazi said that PDMA would lead line departments to eliminate smog in light of Lahore High Court orders. The short-term and long-term plans should be submitted to PDMA immediately and the number of vehicles and lists of teams should be submitted to the PDMA, he added. He said that help of citizens should also be taken for the elimination of smog, and the process of preparing the app for citizens was going on and the citizens would be able to register complaints about factories and public vehicles causing environmental pollution on the app.
He said that the environment and other line departments should work diligently and increase operations to eliminate smog. The traffic police should also hold a crackdown with the help of Punjab Safe Cites Authority cameras, he added.
SMBR Naveed Haider said that the transport department should share the fitness certificate of vehicles with the traffic police, and concerned agencies should deal strictly with those who caused environmental pollution.
He said that actions should be expedited and the ongoing construction work on the roads of Lahore should be completed as soon as possible so that there was no problem of traffic jams on any road. All departments should ensure close liaison and do their best to eliminate smog. He said that the orders of the Lahore High Court would be followed and a zero tolerance policy would be followed against the burning of crop residue, garbage and kilns working without zigzag technology.
Smoke control devices should be installed in factories immediately and indiscriminate action should be taken against violations, he concluded.