The Monal Restaurant established in the scenic Margalla Hills has been found violating plastic bags ban, national environmental quality standards (NEQS) of air, noise, effluents and poorly managing solid waste.
According to a document available with APP, Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during its inspection of the restaurant found that Monal Restaurant excavated about 9-12 Kilometers land for sewage pipelines starting from their restaurant to Saidpur village alongside the Margalla Hills National Park (MHNP) without getting prior approvals from civic authorities and discharging untreated sewerage water directly into nullahs.
It further mentioned that solid or garbage waste was not being properly managed
by Monal Restaurant whereas the NEQS of air emissions and noise for generators were not being complied.
The federal government for the last several months had banned the single time use plastic or polythene bags where the restaurant was also found violating the Plastic Bags Ban.
In order to verify the level of pollution created by the restaurant EPA also collected samples of the site as EPA’s Environmental Monitoring Team (EMT) collected the samples of sewerage or municipal liquid of the restaurant on February 10, 2020
and conducted the chemical analysis in CLEAN Lab of EPA.
EPA took all these measures as per the recommendations of National Assembly’s standing committee on Climate Change that had expressed its serious reservations on environmental breach made by the restaurant in the national park’s vicinity.
“It has been observed that all the collected-samples are exceeding the NEQS for Municipal liquid effluents. Whereas, as far as legal status of Monal Restaurant in view of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act also PEPA 1997 is concerned, no Environmental Approval in respect of the Monal Restaurant has been issued by EPA,” the document noted.
After sample collection and necessary observations made by the EPA team, the environmental watch dog issued a personal hearing notice to the Monal Restaurant to appear before the Director General EPA with the proper response over the issue.—APP
