EPA DOs fail to provide data of clean drinking water to minister

LAHORE: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has no data about the quality of clean drinking water across the province.

This was revealed in a recent meeting chaired by Punjab Environment Minister Muhammad Rizwan. The minister had called the meeting of all district officers (DOs) of EPA the last Wednesday to discuss the environmental issues of the province.

Sources said during the meeting, the minister demanded data of testing of clean drinking water from the district officers but ironically none of them was able to provide him the data. The minister, sources said, expressed anger and displeasure on the absence of data and said that he was astonished that Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) district officers (DOs) didn’t maintain the record of testing of drinking water.

The minister directed all the DOs of the province to start testing of clean drinking water being supplied to the people in their districts immediately. Majority of the population of Punjab province use ground water for drinking purposes but in absence of any checking of water quality they don’t know what they were drinking, the minister said in the meeting. He said that he would not allow the EPA to sit idle.

Sources said that in 2010, EPA was made the major regulatory body to test clean drinking water while WASAs and other relevant government departments were also doing testing of clean drinking water.

Sources claimed that after 2014, EPA had not carried out any major drive to test quality of clean drinking water across the province. They said the EPA didn’t want to do this job and always tried to shift this responsibility to WASAs, Public Health Engineering and other relevant departments. A senior EPD official on the condition of anonymity said that according to National Environmental Quality Standards (NEQS) there are over 100 different parameters which have to be monitored by EPA and out of which 32 parameters were related to drinking water. These parameters included testing of clean drinking water to check the presence of several hazardous matters such as mercury, lead, zinc, fluoride, copper, arsenic, barium, aluminium, cadmium, boron, antimony, pesticides and other toxic elements.

Environmentalists said that contamination of above-mentioned matters and other chemicals in drinking water would compromise the public health and it was the duty of EPA to periodically test drinking water across the province. EPD Minister Muhammad Rizwan while talking with this scribe said that EPA was responsible for implementation of the environmental laws to protect the citizens as well as the environment. To a question that EPA officials claimed that testing of clean drinking water was the responsibility of Wasa and allied departments, the minister said EPA as a regulatory body gave NOCs to all housing societies in which it was mandatory for every society to install water treatment plant. He said EPA had to ensure implementation of its NOCs. Replying to a question about smog, Muhammad Rizwan said that he had started sensitising the department in this regard as smog season was coming. He said the recent meeting of all DOs was called to discuss all environmental issues, including smog.

Answering to a question that some DOs claimed that they were not specifically told to bring data of water testing, he said it was the responsibility of every DO to keep the data update and present it whenever he was asked to. “Protection of environment is on the top priority list of the present government and in this regard the government is ready to provide all kind of help to EPA and its DOs,” the minister concluded. The scribe also tried to contact the EPA director general to get his point of view and made repeated calls to him but he didn't attend the call. The scribe also sent text messages to the DG but he didn't reply to any of the message.