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The danger of electronic waste
Akash Ali is a 9-year-old laborer who works
at a warehouse on Rawalpindi’s College Road. He suffers from asthma, but he
seems unaware of the health and environmental hazards attached to his job.Â
Akash works for a warehouse of electronic waste
(e-waste). “My father has died and now I’m the only breadwinner of my family,”
he told Dawn.com, adding that he has a mother, two younger brothers and a
sister to support. E-waste includes old computers, television sets, mobile
phones, printers, fax machines and electronic games. Most of the material
contains toxic material which poses a serious risk to health, especially for
the laborers involved in physically handling the material. 
He earns 90 rupees ($1.43) daily by cleaning old
computers and their accessories, including keyboards and printed circuit
boards. “Sometimes I am also assigned to burn the old and discarded electronic
material from where I think I contracted the asthma,” he explains.
The owner of the warehouse, meanwhile, declined
to talk on the health hazards his employees faced. What is certain, however, is
that the relevant authorities have been unable to devise a cogent policy to
handle the menace of e-waste.Â
Pakistan has virtually become a dumping ground
for such toxic material. It receives thousands of tons every year from
developed countries like the United States and United Kingdom.Â
A report titled “Recycling ― From E-waste to
Resources” prepared by the United Nations Environment Program and released in
July 2009 says that e-waste has become a huge and growing problem in the modern
world. In the U.S. alone, over 112,000 laptops and desktop computers are
discarded every day.
The report says around 40 million metric tons of
e-waste are produced globally each year, and about 13 percent of that weight is
recycled mostly in developing countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, India
and Sri Lanka. About 9 million tons of this waste is produced by the European
Union.Â
China and India have strengthened their laws
about the import of e-waste from developed countries; so it is likely the
illegal waste will increase manifold in Pakistan in the coming months. Shershah in Karachi remains one of the major markets
for e-waste in Pakistan where all sorts of electronic and electrical goods,
spare parts, computers and smuggled goods arrive by sea and land for sale or
further distribution to other cities.Â
An International Labor Organization report
titled “The global impact of e-waste: Addressing the challenge” says the demand
for e-waste began to grow when scrap yards found a way of extracting valuable
substances such as copper, iron, silicon, nickel and gold during the recycling
process.Â
The report says that even a low level of
exposure of children and pregnant women to lead, mercury, cadmium and other
heavy metals can cause serious neurological damage. Child scavengers who pick
up things from e-waste sites are the most likely victims of different diseases. The main risks to human health and the environment
arise from the presence in e-waste of heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants
or POPs, flame retardants and other potentially hazardous substances. If
improperly managed, such substances may pose significant human and
environmental health risks.Â
Asif Shuja Khan, director general of the
Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency, says the informal e-waste activities
are posing a serious threat to environment and human health as agricultural
lands and livestock are getting contaminated by the waste in some parts of the
country.Â
He says the risks can be lowered if proper
measures are adopted and the recycling industry is legalized through proper
legislation. “Proper ventilation and light should be ensured at the recycling
and dumping sites to minimize the health risks.”Â
Khan says workers in the e-waste sites should
also wear appropriate safety equipment such as goggles, gloves and arm
protection. “Smoking, eating and drinking should be prohibited in the work
areas and workers should also be advised to wash their hands with proper
detergents before meals.” He says
that a number of foreign companies have contacted the Pakistan EPA to start
work in the recycling industry and reuse e-waste in the country, if the
business is given legal cover through proper legislation.Â
“We will take up the issue with the relevant
authorities both in the center and provinces to legislate on import, handling
and management of the e-waste,” he says, adding Pakistan can earn millions of
rupees, thousands of people can get jobs and health and environmental risks can
also be minimized if the business is legalized through proper legislation.Â
So far, the business of importing e-waste and
its subsequent recycling at different places in the country remains illegal
under the Basel Convention, to which Pakistan is a party, but it is going on
without any check. The Convention on the Control of Trans-boundary Movements of
Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal bans the exchange of hazardous waste,
including e-waste, between developed and developing countries.Â
As Pakistan has not framed any particular rules
and regulations to regulate the e-waste; so the importers keep benefiting from
the loopholes. The e-waste is imported from developed countries under the
disguise of “second-hand goods” and then recycled here for reuse.Â
Under Articles 4 and 5 of the convention, Pakistan
is bound to take “appropriate and legal” measures and to establish a competent
authority to manage and regulate the e-waste. The relevant ministries including
the commerce and information technology departments have so far done nothing in
this regard. The commerce ministry’s
deputy secretary (foreign trade), Muhammad Ashraf, admits that no specific
rules and regulations are framed to regulate and manage the e-waste. However,
he was quick to clarify that the ministry itself doesn’t initiate any policy on
any issue ― rather it is the responsibility of the stakeholders to highlight a
problem and submit their proposals with the ministry for the formulation of a
formal policy.Â
“Under the Basel Convention, the ministry is so
far only looking into environmental and health risks of plastic waste being
imported from different countries,” he says. Ashraf says a formal strategy on
the import of e-waste may be formulated if certain health and environmental
hazards linked to the waste are brought into notice of the ministry.Â
Officials in the IT ministry also remain
oblivious to health and environmental hazards of e-waste; so nothing is being
planned to regulate the waste or take up the issue with relevant authorities
for redress.
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