SIALKOT: The best water management practices (BWMPs) experts of WWF have urged the Sialkot based tanners to give up the necessary use of water and chemicals in their leather tanneries for reducing the environmental pollution caused by their tanneries in Sialkot, saying that the unnecessary usage of the water has increased the water consumption to maximum level in Sialkot here.
They stated this while addressing the participants of an awareness-raising seminar on “Best Water Management Practices (BWMPs) in Leather Tanneries” jointly organized mutually by WWF and Pakistan Gloves Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PGMEA) at the auditorium of Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI) here. A large number of the tanners and exporters attended this seminar.
SCCI SVP Mir Alamgir Meyer presided over the seminar. Chairman Pakistan Gloves Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PGMEA) Muhammad Younas, former PGMEA Chairman Shehzada Ibne Iqbal Syed and District Officer Environment Sialkot Irshad Nagi were also present on this occasion.
The WWF experts including Suhail Ali Naqvi, Kashif Gillani and Suhaib Anwar disclosed that the most of the leather tanneries of Sialkot had been lacking the direly needed Process Control Laboratories (PCLs), as they had not yet established PCLs since the establishment of these leather tanneries several decades ago in Sialkot, due to which the tanneries had been discharging the poisonous chemicalized waters, causing larger scale environmental pollution there.
The WWF exporters also stressed the tanners to ensure the early establishment of Process Control Laboratories (PCLs) in Sialkot, besides, adopting the anti-pollution techniques to test the purification of the under use chemicals in their tanneries to avert the environmental pollution.
The WWF exporters also gave detailed presentations on “ Alliance of Water Stewardship (AWS) standards in Business and its importance”, City-wide partnership for sustainable water use and water stewardship in SMEs of Pakistan” and “findings of audits and business cases on the major problems of water and pollution in the leather sector”.
