The government’s proposed clean air legislation will allow industry to continue polluting as usual, according to a group of 40 organisations, including trade unions and environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
The criticism was contained in a submission to Parliament on the National Environment Management: Air Quality Bill, which the groups made public on Monday.
”The draft bill indirectly allows industry to continue polluting as usual due to its failure to guarantee successful implementation,” they said.
They also said that though the main purpose of the legislation was to protect people’s health, health was not mentioned in its formal objectives.
The 40 included the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the environmental NGOs groundWork and Earthlife Africa, and community-based environmental pressure groups.
Among the pressure groups were the Steel Valley Crisis Committee, the Sasolburg Air Monitoring Committee, the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance and the Western Cape’s Table View Residents’ Association.
Parliament will host public hearings on the bill on June 24.
The organisations said that though the bill recognised that the ”burden of health impacts” fell most heavily on the poor it was too vague to ensure this was not perpetuated in a democratic South Africa.
It had to address injustices where, for historical reasons, communities had polluting industries placed in their neighbourhoods.
It also had to address rights to compensation for injury or illness as a result of the operations of dirty and dangerous industry.
The organisations said emission standards should be set nationally for uniformity and to dissuade dirty industry from moving to areas where there was weaker provincial and local government.
These standards should be health-based in accordance with World Health Organisation guidelines. – Sapa