Murtaza Wahab commits to reviewing environmental laws to make them business-friendly

Adviser to the Sindh Chief Minister on Law and Environment Barrister Murtaza Wahab has accepted the demand of traders and industrialists of Karachi for reviewing afresh the provincial environment laws to make them business-friendly to the maximum possible extent.

He made the commitment to this effect on Wednesday while speaking at a symposium on solid waste management organised by the Karachi Chamber of Commerce & Industry. The law adviser said a committee would be established to review the existing environmental laws of the province and a notification to this effect would be issued by the Sindh environment department within one week.

Wahab lamented on the occasion that the shopkeepers and owners of restaurants in the city had not been discharging their civic duties of properly disposing of waste generated by their businesses. He said that during the weeklong sanitation campaign earlier carried out in the city on the directives of the Sindh CM, the fact came to fore that the shopkeepers and restaurant owners were carelessly dumping their waste in the open on nearby roads.

He said the Sindh government had carried out beautification of a few underpasses in the city through tile work but earlier in the morning, it had come to his knowledge that the beauty of those tiles had been marred due to anti-social practice of paan spitting by careless citizens.

He called on the people to show responsibility while disposing of municipal waste in order to help resolve the sanitation issues of the city. Wahab said the proposed waste-to-energy project in Karachi had failed to attract investment due to unreasonable tariff policy of the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority.

He added that it was impossible for the Sindh government to control the prices of items of everyday use owing to the increase in the cost of gas and petroleum products by the federal government. He said if a retailer had been buying a product at the cost of Rs100, the provincial government could not compel him to sell it at Rs80.