• Al-Zaabi voices his concern over fog situation in Pakistan.
• UAE envoy says he is in touch with Pakistan government.
• He says smog must be controlled by all possible means.
  

ISLAMABAD: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has offered Pakistan to provide material and technical assistance to lessen the effects of smog in various parts of the country.

In a brief interview with The News here on Saturday, Ambassador of UAE to Pakistan Hamad Obaid Ibrahim Salem Al-Zaabi voiced his concern over the fog situation in Pakistan, especially in Punjab.

He recalled that the UAE administration had provided technical assistance to Pakistan in order to help them overcome the haze last year, while the caretaker government was in power here.

The UAE provided special aircraft for cloud seeding that helped in artificial rainmaking in some areas and provided relief to the brotherly people, he added.

Ambassador Al-Zaabi said that smog has been discomforting and it must be controlled by all possible means. He expressed satisfaction about the administration here which has been taking suitable steps to check the situation.

The UAE envoy said that he was in touch with the Pakistan government and hopefully it would take further steps to mitigate the suffering on account of smog.

The UAE had helped Pakistan in cloud seeding for precipitation in December last year, in the first experiment of its kind for the South Asian country.

Planes equipped with cloud seeding equipment flew over 10 areas of Lahore on December 16, 2023, often ranked one of the worst places globally for air pollution.

Addressing a press conference, the then Punjab’s caretaker chief minister Mohsin Naqvi had said artificial rain was used to combat hazardous levels of smog in the Punjab’s capital.

CM Naqvi had stated that the “gift” was provided by the UAE.

“Teams from the UAE, along with two planes, arrived here about 10 to 12 days ago. They used 48 flares to create the rain,” he told media.

The UAE has increasingly used cloud seeding, sometimes referred to as artificial rain or blueskying, to create rain in the arid expanse of the country.

The weather modification involves releasing common salt — or a mixture of different salts — into clouds. The crystals encourage condensation to form as rain.

It has been deployed in dozens of countries, including the United States, China and India.

Even very modest rain is effective in bringing down pollution, experts say.

Air pollution has worsened in Pakistan in recent years, as a mixture of low-grade diesel fumes, smoke from seasonal crop burn off and colder winter temperatures coalesce into stagnant clouds of smog.

Lahore suffers the most from the toxic smog, choking the lungs of more than 11 million residents in the metropolis during the winter season.

After Punjab, the smog has spread to multiple districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as well.