Smog revisits City; AQI deteriorates

LAHORE : The provincial capital’s AQI continued to deteriorate as the AQI crossed 400 at some places while the average AQI was 264, which came into the category of very unhealthy.

Environmental experts said that PM2.5 concentrations in Lahore was currently 37.8 times the WHO annual air quality guideline value. They said the smog has restarted to build over the City skies and in case of no rain the situation will become worse.

Data collected from IQAir, the highest AQI of 455 was recorded at Polo Ground Cantt, Pakistan Engineering Services (Pvt) Ltd (398), Syed Maratib Ali Road (328), Phase 8 DHA (298), Bread & Beyond (296), WWF-Pakistan (287), Valencia Town (279), University of Management and Technology (269), Ghazi Road Interchange (267) and Johar Town (264).

Met officials predicted that weather will likely to remain dry and cold in most parts of the country. However, apart from partly cloudy weather in Gilgit-Baltistan, light rain at a few places and light snowfall in the mountains were likely. Smog/fog is expected in the plains of Punjab and upper Sindh during the night.

They said that minimum temperature was recorded at Leh where mercury dropped to -07C, while in Lahore, it was 13°C and maximum was 25.5°C.

Meanwhile, the Punjab police arrested 12 individuals and registered 18 cases during a crackdown on people and units violating the anti-smog laws across the province, including Lahore.

According to a police spokesman, 362 people were fined more than Rs5.5 lakh, and 29 people were issued warnings.

The police received seven complaints about crop residue burning, 266 about vehicles emitting excessive smoke and two about brick-kilns using old technology.

This year, a total of 3,644 accused were arrested and 3,014 cases were registered in the anti-smog crackdown. Around 38,290 people were fined a total of Rs96 million, and warnings were issued to 6,916 people.

Around 1,974 complaints were received about crop residue burning, 30,811 for vehicles emitting heavy smoke, 347 for industrial activity, 1,361 about brick-kilns, and 327 about other violations of anti-smog laws.

In the last 24 hours, 4,865 smoky vehicles were fined, 445 were impounded while two fitness certificates were suspended.

This year, 835,259 vehicles emitting excessive smoke were issued tickets, 168,467 vehicles were impounded, and fitness certificates of 10,064 vehicles were suspended.