The Environment Protection Department (EPD) has inspected 12,614 locations in the Punjab during the past two months and issued 4,367 notices, sealed 27, and lodged FIRs against 31 tyre shops, warehouses, scrap-yards and owners of under construction buildings, for not complying with the EPD’s directives to control dengue fever.
The government had directed the EPD’s Dengue Directorate to identify and eliminate the mosquito breeding sites.
EPD Secretary Sher Alam Mahsud constituted five anti-dengue squads to inspect tyre warehouses, scrap yards, nurseries and under construction buildings in Lahore so that mosquito breeding sites could be eliminated.
Every district had a squad to carry out these inspections.
The squads inspected 2,018 places in Lahore including 954 tyre shops, 643 scrap yards, 229 nurseries and 192 under-construction sites. As many as 106 notices were issued and 9 FIRS registered against owners of warehouses for stacking tyres, plastic scrap and plant pots without cover.
The squads inspected around 6,308 tyre warehouses, 1,749 junkyards, 1,140 nurseries and 1,399 construction sites in the province.
New operating procedures are being adopted as these squads have also been holding awareness seminars with tyres and junkyards’ associations.
Mahsud said the government was utilising all available resources to eliminate the threat of dengue virus.
He said the EPD’s dengue directorate had been working round the clock throughout the province to prevent an outbreak of dengue fever. He said the anti-dengue squads would continue inspecting and eliminating breeding sites till the threat was eliminated. He said that the EPD had proffered several recommendations to the government to deal with unregistered and noncompliant warehouses. He said that he had asked the government to shred confiscated tyres.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 26th, 2013.