Emphasizing the need for urgency, he said air pollution had enormously increased up to levels that could prove fatal, and the time to do something was now or never.

Zabardast Khan Bangash, Manager Quetta Office of IUCN Pakistan said a working group should be formed to prepare a strategy to mobilize the community in Quetta city to create awareness of the hazardous impacts of air pollution.

He said Air Quality Monitoring was a new initiative taken for the very first time in Quetta City. This would be helpful in not only keeping a check on the ever increasing  carbon emissions and air pollution of the city but will also contribute in reduction and control of hazardous gases.

Mohammad Aqibuddin, the Air Quality Monitoring expert from IUCN Pakistan detailed the first ever Air Quality Monitory initiative in Quetta and explained the main features of proposed co-benefits training. He said an international resource person accompanied by national experts will impart the training on clean air quality monitoring mechanism.

Secretary Environment discussed various constraints and barriers in the implementation process and termed it a big challenge, which could be overcome by all the stakeholders if they played their role honestly.
He thanked the committee members for their inputs and recommendations and applauded IUCN’s efforts in initiating and facilitation the process.

Director General BEPA, Ghulam Rasool Jamali, Chief of section Environment P&D Department Ikram ul Haq, City District Government’s, Chief Coordinator Ghulam Qadir Lehri, Director Meteorology Saifullah Shami, Dr. Younis Mengal Provincial Chief of  UNICEF, Aftab Yasin from Hydrocarbon Development Institute of Pakistan, Azeem ur Rehman from Habibullah Coastal Power, Pervaiz Iqbal from WESS,  Qurban Gharshin from BEEJ also attended the meeting.

Notes to editors

For more information or to set up interviews, please contact:
Faryal Ahmed, Communications and ESD officer, Balochistan Programme for Sustainable Development
92 (081 2840450-1-2)

Afia Salam, Coordinator Communications and Outreach, IUCN Pakistan, Country Office
Tel: +92 21 586 1540/41/42/43, Mobile: +92 300 922 3019, afia.salam@iucnp.org; Web: http://www.iucnp.org

About IUCN

IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, helps the world find pragmatic solutions to our most pressing environment and development challenges by supporting scientific research; managing field projects all over the world; and bringing governments, NGOs, the UN, international conventions and companies together to develop policy, laws and best practice.

The world's oldest and largest global environmental network, IUCN is a democratic membership union with more than 1,000 government and NGO member organizations, and almost 11,000 volunteer scientists and experts in some 160 countries.  IUCN's work is supported by over 1,000 professional staff in 60 offices and hundreds of partners in public, NGO and private sectors around the world. IUCN's headquarters are located in Gland, near Geneva, in Switzerland.

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