‘Transfer of brick-kilns to zigzag technology to be completed by 2020’

LAHORE: The physical infrastructure of Orange Line Metro Train project has been completed. The trial run of metro train on its whole route would be held on December 10. Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar has approved it and the ceremony would be held at the last station of Ali Town.

This was decided at a meeting was held under the chair of Chief Minister Usman Buzdar on Friday in which secretary transport gave a briefing about the trial run of the train.

The chief minister directed the officials to early completion of the roads being repaired beneath the train route. The traffic problems should be solved at the earliest, he added. Transport Minister Jehanzeb Khan Khitchi, MD Punjab Mass Transit Authority, secretaries of transport and information departments, Commissioner and DIG (Ops) Lahore attended the meeting.

Meanwhile, Minister of State for Climate Change Zartaj Gull called on the chief minister at his office here on Friday and discussed the strategy of dealing with smog and overcoming the environmental pollution.

Buzdar said the Punjab government has constituted a task force to deal with the smog issue through a comprehensive strategy. He said urban forest stations would be set up at an area of 60,000 kanals in Lahore.

Buzdar said steel rolling industries and brick-kilns are being transferred to zigzag technology and added a deadline of 2020 had been fixed for completing the process. Usman Buzdar said the campaign to overcome environmental pollution and smog had been expedited and maintained that Punjab Green Development Programme costing 273 million dollars will prove a game-changer. Besides, 30 new air quality monitoring stations will be set up in Punjab to monitor air quality.

The CMregretted that air pollution had increased due to tangled building infrastructure. Today, cities are polluted due to the wrong policies of the past, he regretted. The government is fully committed to providing a neat and clean environment to the people as contaminated effluents badly affect the environment and human health, the chief minister said. Usman Buzdar pledged that the PTI-led government would clean up both political and environmental pollution of the past. The provincial ministers and members of the Punjab Assembly also called on Chief Minister Usman Buzdar at his office here on Friday.