‘Environmental standards for vehicles being revised’
By Ali Imran

ISLAMABAD—The National Environmental Quality Standards for the both new and used petrol, diesel vehicles and rickshaws are being revised to bring down the emission levels to the European Union emission standards,lowering the atmospheric pollution levels and preventing the related health and environmental hazards.
This was decided in a high level meeting held here Friday, under the chairmanship of Federal Minister for Environment Maj (R) Tahir Iqbal. The meeting was attended by all the stakeholders including; officials of ministries of Environment, Petroleum, chief executives of car manufacturing associations and petrol companies including Indus Motors, PSO, Shell, etc participated in the meeting.
The schedule for achieving these new standards was agreed with consensus of all the participants and it was decided that EURO 2 standards for petrol vehicles will be achieved by July, 2008, while Jan, 2009 was accepted as the final date for diesel vehicles.
The Minister said that Rs 30 billion was being spent each year on respiratory and heart diseases resulting from vehicularemission therefore immediate steps were required for improv ing the conditions. He added that new standards for vehicles which require improvement in engine technology/specification and quality of fuels are being proposed for approval by the Pakistan Environmental Protection Council (PEPC).
He said that car manufacturers will be bound to install computerised systems for testing the cars by environmental standards before marketing. DG PAK-EPA,in his presentation informed that in the existing NEQS related to vehicular emissions only three parameters viz smoke, carbon monoxide (CO) and noise were included which are far less than the international standards, it was therefore necessary to revise these NEQs to bring it at par with the countries of the region.