MUET Water Center organizes Executive Seminar on Industrial Wastewater Management ‘None of 4 thousand industries in Sindh treat effluents’

Justice (R) Amir Hani Muslim, the head of Water Commission constituted by the
Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP) said that industrial units wereobligated to install treatment plants as per law. ‘All industries ought to treat effluents before they discharge them’.
He said that all industries have an obligation that all the discharge effluent has to be treated at the industrial units primarily. He said this while he spoke as Chief Guest at a seminar on ‘Industrial Wastewater Management, organized by the US-Pakistan Centers for Advanced Studies in Water (USPCAS-W) of Mehran University of Engineering & Technology (MUET).
There are around four thousand industrial units in Sindh and none of them have installed a treatment plant, he said adding that a quantity of 450MGD untreated water was being drained directly into the sea.
It was the commission that compelled the provincial and federal authorities to install treatment plants, he added. At present, 70-80MGDwater is now being treated through a treatment plant following the directions of the commission. By June 2019, another treatment plant with a treatment capacity of 100MGD water will start functioning.
Justice Hani Muslim revealed Karachi Port Trust (KPT)had also committed to installing a treatment plant with a capacity to treat 100MGD water. Yet another plant will start operatingin a span of two years’ time.
Stressing the need to hold pollutant industrial units accountable, Justice Hani Muslim said industrial pollution was hazardous for the people as well as marine life thus it needed not to be monitored by the stakeholders only but also to be resolved on a sustainable basis.
For solid waste management, he said an effective work was required to be done in the province.
USAID Acting Mission Director Sindh and Balochistan Mark Sorensen also spoke in the seminar saying USAID was always supportive to research and academic activities in Pakistan so as to find out the way forward for persisting problems like water, energy, and agriculture. The ‘Water Center’is committed to producing quality graduates which will ultimately engage them to resolve the water crises in the country.
MUET Vice-Chancellor of Dr. Mohammad AslamUqaili said the Center was producing water experts with the latest curricula, state-of-the-art laboratory facilities to resolve water issues of the country. Without quality graduates, reliable and tested data, one cannot resolve issues.
He informed the seminar that as many as 35 sugar mills in Sindh were operating without any treatment plants which caused various water and environment issues that the community wasfaced with.
He assured academia’s research support for a sustainable solution of the issues for the community across the board based.
USPCAS-W Project Directors Dr. Bakshlal Lashari from MUET and Dr. Steven J. Burian from University Utah also spoke in the technical session regarding research efforts being made by the center.
Sindh Minister for Climate Change, Coastal Development, Information, Science and Technology, Taimor Talpur who was the chief guest in the second session of the moot said water is a very much precious commodity for the humankind and it is diminishing day by day. He called for steps and change in lifestyle to stop the wastage of water.n