Amnesty International, a human rights organisation called upon Pakistan officials on Friday for urgent action for residents of Lahore due to the smog, which has engulfed the city of more than 10 million people over the past week. According to local media, all public and private schools, not just in Lahore, but in Gujranwala and Faisalabad districts would remain also closed on Friday on account of smog.
According to Amnesty International, tens of thousands of people in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore are at risk of respiratory disease because of poor air quality related to thick smog hanging over the region.
Rimmel Mohydin, South Asia Campaigner at Amnesty, said people in Lahore have not had healthy air for a single day this year and that the air quality deteriorated to hazardous levels in November.
The organisation said that Pakistani officials' inadequate response to the air quality raises significant human rights concerns.
According to local media, citizens were forced to stay indoors as the city's average Air Quality Index in Lahore reached 598 on Thursday.
Rahman says thousands of people were treated this week for respiratory-related diseases, including asthma, flu, fever and cough. Amnesty also said, “The air in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, is so toxic that people’s health and lives are in grave danger.”
According to an R-Smog report, few major causes of smog was the transport sector followed by industry and then stubble burning by farmers.
Three teenage girls, Laiba Siddiqi, Leila Alam and Mishael Hayat filed a suit against the government of Punjab for the 'violation of their fundamental right to a clean and healthy environment' on November 5. The petition said that the government had been downplaying the scale of crisis because its standards of measurement differ from what is accepted internationally.
