PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court’s Justice Yahya Afridi and Justice Syed Afsar Shah, while hearing an application filed by the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (Pak-EPA), have ordered the closure of 45 marble units in Buner district.
The order was issued by the ‘green bench’ comprising of above mentioned judges over violating the environmental protection orders. The countrywide high court benches dealing with environment-related petitions are called green benches.
The EPA in application said that its monitoring team visited 256 marble units and found that 189 hadn’t set up settling tanks in accordance with the agency’s directives and issued environmental protection orders to these units over the violation of the Environmental Protection Act.
EPA Director General Dr Mohammad Bashir said a report of 62 marble units flouting the EPO was presented before the high court’s green bench and 45 of these marble units had still been violating the EPO. He requested the bench to issue directives to the Buner district administration for ensuring the EPO implementation.
