Lahore: red-eyed residents cough, everything smelled of smoke, and car headlights shining on them in the middle of the day.
Smog back blanketed Lahore Pakistan, and its citizens to despair.
Megacity of nearly 11 million people near the border with India was once the ancient capital of the Mughal Empire and remains the cultural center of Pakistan.
But now regularly ranks among the cities of the world’s worst air pollution – a mix of low-level diesel fumes, smoke from the burning of seasonal crops, and winter temperatures are cooler combines cloud stagnant.
Syed Hasnain looked exhausted as he waited at a four-year-old son who has been accepted at Mayo City Hospital.
“He was coughing and could not breathe properly and had a high temperature.
We thought maybe it was a coronavirus so we took him to the hospital.
But the doctors told us that he had developed pneumonia because of the haze,” Hasnain tell who looked exhausted.
AFP.
“It’s very worrying,” he admitted.
“I know that the haze could be bad for health – but I did not know it would be so bad that my son will be hospitalized.” Teachers are also concerned for the kids.
“The pollution is a problem even in the classroom.
We see children with red eyes and irritation, others continue to cough,” Nadia Sarwar, a government school teacher, told AFP.
One child, who suffered from asthma, had to stay at home for several days because he continued to attack, he said.
Across the border, Delhi has closed the school until the end of the month due to pollution woes.
But Sarwar said it would be difficult to do the same thing in Lahore.
Children have missed so much due to the pandemic Coronavirus, and to close the school now will make them “pay problem they did not create.” “I feel sad for them,” he said.
“In the summer it’s too hot here for outdoor activities.
And in winter there is pollution and dengue fever now.
What can a child? Where would she go?” Adults are also struggling.
Rana Bibi, a mother of three-year 39-year-old who works as a cleaner, using a dupatta (scarf) as a face mask while waiting for a rickshaw to take her home.
“The smoke hurt my eyes and throat.
That’s why I cover my face this way.
First of all they made it to Corona (virus), but now I do it myself,” he said.
“When I got home I always smell smoke; my clothes, my hair, and my hands dirty.
But what can you do? I can not sit at home.
I’m used to it.” Some houses she cleans “had these machines that clean the air.
I do not know.
That’s what they tell me.
But there was smoke everywhere here.” In recent years people have built a homemade air purifier and filed lawsuits against government officials desperate bid to clear the air.
But the authorities have been slow to act, blaming haze in India or claim figures exaggerated.
“Every year we read in the news that Lahore is the most polluted cities or that it has the worst smog in the world.
Nothing happened.
No one cares,” said Saira Aslam, who works in the HR department of technology companies.
Angry 27-year-old: “The government escaped him last year because we were all sitting in the house anyway because of the lockdown.
But they can not act like nothing is wrong,” he said.
“I have elderly people at home that is literally at risk because of the smog.
It is a health hazard and should be treated as such.”