A technician examines a vehicle to check its emissions on a road on the outskirts of Islamabad. Photo: AFP
ISLAMABAD:
Truck driver Muhammad Afzal didn’t expect to be stopped, let alone fined, by police while driving towards Islamabad this week due to thick diesel fumes emanating from his exhaust pipe.
“This is unfair,” he said after being told to pay 1,000 rupees ($3.60) and threatened with confiscation of his truck if he did not “solve” the problem. “I was coming from Lahore after repairing my vehicle. They stepped on the accelerator to make it smoke. It’s an injustice,” he told AFP.
The checkpoints set up this month are part of an offensive by authorities to combat the city’s rising smog levels, with the winter months being the worst due to atmospheric inversions that trap pollutants at ground level.
“We have already warned the owners to take stern action and will stop their entry into the city if they do not comply with the orders,” Dr Zaigham Abbas of Pakistan’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said as he inspected the checkpoint in the southeast corner of the capital.
For Waleed Ahmed, a technician who inspects vehicles at the site, “just like a human being, a vehicle has a life cycle. Whoever passes through it releases smoke that is dangerous for human health.”
self-inflicted crisis
Although not yet at the extreme winter levels of Lahore or the megacity of Karachi, where heavy industry and brick kilns spew tons of pollutants every year, Islamabad is steadily closing the gap.
So far in December, seven “very unhealthy” days have already been recorded for PM2.5 particles of more than 150 micrograms per cubic meter, according to Swiss-based monitoring company IQAir.
Intraday PM2.5 levels in Islamabad often exceed those in Karachi and Lahore, and in 2024 the city’s average PM2.5 reading for the year was 52.3 micrograms, surpassing Lahore’s 46.2.
Those annual readings are well beyond the safe level of five micrograms recommended by the World Health Organization.
Built from scratch as Pakistan’s capital in the 1960s, the city was conceived as an urban model for a rapidly growing nation, with wide avenues and vast green spaces abutting the foothills of the Himalayas.
But the sprawling layout discourages walking and public transportation remains limited, meaning cars (mostly older models) are essential for residents to get around.
“The capital region is overwhelmingly suffocated by its transportation sector,” which produces 53 percent of its toxic PM2.5 particles, the Pakistan Air Quality Initiative, a research group, said in a recent report. “The haze over Islamabad… is not the smoke of industry, but the exhaust of a million private trips – a self-inflicted crisis,” he said.
Your basic right
Announcing the crackdown on December 7, EPA chief Nazia Zaib Ali said more than 300 fines were issued at checkpoints in the first week and 80 vehicles were impounded.
“We cannot allow non-compliant vehicles to poison the city’s air and endanger public health at any cost,” he said in a statement.
The city has also begun setting up stations where drivers can have their emissions inspected, and those who pass receive a green sticker on their windshield.
“We were worried about Lahore, but now it’s Islamabad. And it’s all because of vehicles emitting pollution,” said Iftikhar Sarwar, 51, as his car was checked on a busy road near an Islamabad park. “I never needed medication before, but now I get allergies if I don’t take a pill in the morning. The same thing happens with my family,” he added.
Other residents say they are concerned that the government’s measures will not be enough to counter worsening winter smog.
“This is not the Islamabad I came to 20 years ago,” said Sulaman Ijaz, an anthropologist. “I feel uncomfortable when I think about what I will say if my daughter asks for clean air; that is her basic right.”
