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Polluting Punjab Brick by Brick
Polluting Punjab Brick by Brick
Only 1268 kilns in Punjab out of a total of 7530 have been converted to zigzag
technology so far.
Kiln owners, however, are not the only ones worried about the deadline. Kiln workers
are also unhappy about the government's order to close down the kilns. Muhammad
Shabbir, provincial secretary general of the All Pakistan Kiln Workers Union, says the
workers, who are already earning very low wages and operating in unsuitable and
unsafe conditions, will be forced to starve if kilns in Punjab are shut down after
December 31.
Talking to Sujag, he says, “In case the kiln industry shuts down, Prime Minister Imran
Khan should register kiln workers in the Ehsas program, the federal government funded
social security program, so that these workers can feed their children.”
One step forward, two steps back
In 2017, a meeting of the representatives of the International Center for Integrated
Mountain Development (ICIMOD), an international organization working on
environmental protection, the government of Pakistan and kiln owners was held in
Islamabad. In this meeting, kiln owners were shown videos about zigzag technology. In
the same year, kiln owners and government officials visited Nepal where they observed
kilns running on that technology.
Mehr Abdul Haq, general secretary of the All Pakistan Kiln Owners Association, and
other officials of his organization held seminars in Lahore, Islamabad, Multan and
Faisalabad on their return from Nepal and shared their experiences with other kiln
owners in these seminars. They not only introduced zigzag technology to the owners
but also promised them that the government would provide them cheap loans to help
them change the structure of their kilns and install electric fans in them. Three years
later, Mehr Abdul Haq is not happy with how the government has handled the issue.
He claims the World Bank had provided two billion rupees to the government of
Pakistan under the Green Development Program in 2017 which were to be disbursed as
loans to kiln owners on easy terms so that they could transfer their kilns to zigzag
technology. Even though three years have passed since the receipt of money by the
government, he says, not a single rupee has been given to kiln owners.
World Bank had provided two billion rupees to the government of Pakistan which were
to be disbursed as loans to kiln so that they could transfer their kilns to zigzag
technology.
Muhammad Noman Younis, assistant director of the Environment Department in Kasur,
acknowledges that the World Bank had donated two billion rupees to the government to
transfer kilns to zigzag technology. But, he says, the government has not yet made any
policy regarding this money and is not given it to anyone.
Government claims
Environment department officials stationed in different parts of central Punjab claim that
kiln owners are not adopting the new technology just out of fear. Muhammad Arif
Mahmood, assistant director of the Environment Department in Faisalabad, tells Sujag:
“Whenever a new technology comes along, people are reluctant to adopt it at first” but
he also claims that the owners of kilns are “embracing this technology by and by.”
But, according to a report prepared by the Provincial Disaster Management Authority
(PDMA) and released on November 14, 2020, the speed of this adaptation is not really
great. Only 1268 kilns in Punjab out of a total of 7530 have been converted to zigzag
technology so far, the report said. In other words, less than 20 percent of the total kilns
in the province are using the new technology.
This report was originally published in Urdu and has been translated by Zahid Ali.