ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masour Barzani warned on Sunday that the authorities will take legal action against refineries, factories and individuals that violate regulations and cause harm to the environment.
Barzani led a meeting with relevant authorities on Sunday to discuss the pollution issues in Erbil and Duhok province. It was decided that legal action would be taken against those who pollute the environment.
He stressed that “the protection of citizens’ health and Kurdistan Region’s environment and solving the problem of air pollution are very important to us and they are the government's priority,” a government statement cited the prime minister as saying.
The government made several decisions to tackle the issue, including pursuing legal action against oil refineries and factories that operate outside regulations and cause pollution, banning the production of low quality vehicle fuel, and making it obligatory for the private generators to use filters in order to reduce pollution.
Thousands of public and private generators operate in the Kurdistan Region, in addition to over two million vehicles that require fuel daily. Researchers suggest that the low quality of fuel is one of the main contributors to the decline in air quality and increasing threats to public health.
Erbil’s internal security forces last month announced that they closed several illegal refineries and arrested the operators as part of an ongoing effort to curb toxic air pollution, a persistent issue despite repeated crackdowns over the years. They also arrested some refinery owners and employees.
In 2017, the Kurdistan Region’s natural resources ministry announced the closure of dozens of these refineries.
Similar measures have been taken in subsequent years, but the effort to eliminate them has proven Sisyphean, with operations continuing to resurface across the region.
Citing data from the Switzerland-based IQAir, Salih Najib, a professor at the natural resources department at the University of Sulaimani said in February last year that the air quality in Erbil has been consistently reported to be unhealthy. IQAir estimates Erbil’s air quality index (AQI) at 152, which implies that the general public is prone to experiencing health problems due to the air.
Erbil’s PM2.5 concentration is approximately 11 times higher than the World Health Organization’s (WHO) annual air guideline value, according to the Swiss company.
The rate of patients diagnosed with cancer in Sulaimani has been consistently increasing over the past five years. Almost 6,300 people were diagnosed with cancer in 2020. The number jumped to over 7,900 in 2021 and reached 9,000 in 2022. Nearly 10,000 people were diagnosed with cancer in Sulaimani in 2023.