The Ministry of Religious Affairs approved a project to create a recycling plant in the federal capital to discard old sacred papers of the Quran.
The project was in the doldrums since 2016 and was approved at a ministry’s meeting of the Departmental Development Working Party presided over by Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony Secretary Sardar Ajaz Ahmad Khan Jaffar.
Jaffer told the meeting that the holy papers recycling plant would be established on 10 kanals of land in the Haji camp in the suburbs of Islamabad with a cost of Rs 331 million.
According to the official, the ministry had marked a site for the plant near Haji camp. He said that within a period of one year the plant would be constructed by the Pakistan Public Works Department.
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It will be the country’s first such kind of plant to recycle sacred papers.
He said that through the establishment of the recycling plant, blasphemous incidents would be overcome which were caused by the impudence of the sacred text.
The official added that boxes would be installed in different areas of the city for people to drop off text and paper.
Moreover, almost one ton of paper will be recycled on daily basis.
Officials said that the plant for recycling sacred papers has already been approved by the Senate Standing Committee on Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony and the Council of Islamic Ideology.
Furthermore, the recycling process would include pulping, deinking and new paper making. The ink would be taken out during a flotation process where air would be blown into the mixture.
The ink would come to the surface in adherence to air bubbles from where it would be separated. After the separation of the ink, the fiber may be bleached, generally with hydrogen peroxide, oxygen, or chlorine dioxide.
Besides this, a new Haji camp in Lahore would be built on 57 kanals of land in Harbanspura at a projected cost of Rs 1,996 million in three years.
The boundaries of the Haji camp had already been completed, the official added.
