Amid the acute economic crisis, Pakistan has another headache to deal with. Islamabad’s senate standing committee on climate change was left shocked when it learnt that the country was importing waste from countries including United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Italy and Saudi Arabia, Express Tribune reported.
The senate panel was baffled on seeing the names of some friendly countries and those who had voiced concerns on climate change issues in the list, the website reported.
“Why Pakistan never objected to imported waste,” a committee member asked, questioning why the embassies, ministries, relevant departments as well as the provincial and the federal government never tried to stop it.
Interestingly, a majority of senators admitted that they were not even aware of the fact that Pakistan had become a dumping ground for most advanced countries. Some of the senators wondered why isn’t Pakistan exporting waste, adding that the streets across the cities were full of toxic and non-toxic waste.
“Imported waste Na Manzoor,” Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf senator Faisal Javed said, invoking his party chief and former prime minister Imran Khan’s narrative of the country being ruled by an ‘imported government.’
During the meeting, it has been revealed that most of the imported waste was dumped in the sea and major cities when the goods are transported there.
The revelation comes a week after the Pakistan cabinet was informed that the country annually produces 30 million tonnes of waste in addition to annually importing 80,000 tonnes of bundled waste from across the world, which has been resulting in environmental and health problems.
Pakistan has been battling worst inflation as it closes in on a bailout by the International Monetary Fund. The consumer prices rose by 21.32 per cent last month, according to the data by the Shehbaz Sharif government, Bloomberg reported.
That compares with a median estimate for a 17.9% gain in a Bloomberg survey of economists and a 13.8% acceleration in May, Bloomberg report said.
June inflation is the highest in 13 years, said Mohammed Sohail, chief executive of Topline Securities, adding that prices will start coming down in the coming 4 to 5 months.
