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| Mustafa Kamal launches Green Karachi project |
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Questions arise on modalities; eyebrows raised on claims so far
Friday, July 04, 2008
By our correspondent
Karachi
After chopping down thousands of trees in the city in the past couple of years, City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal on Thursday announced that his administration would plants several hundred thousand trees by the end of the year. He claimed that his administration had planted 52,000 trees so far.
In a statement issued on Thursday, City Nazim Mustafa Kamal said that the city government had started work on a “Green Karachi” project under which thousands of trees will be planted at Sharea Faisal, Karsaz Road, New M.A Jinnah Road, University Road and Rashid Minhas Road. The city will have more than 100,000 new plants by the end of December, he promised. However, there were no details on how this landmark would be achieved and what ground work had been done in this regard.
Mustafa Kamal appealed to the citizens of Karachi to help the city government in its endeavours to transform Karachi into a “Green City”. The city Nazim said that the city government had already initiated a large scale tree planting campaign during which so far over 52,000 trees have been planted in various parts of the city. The campaign was aimed to eradicate environmental pollution and make the city green. “Everyone living in Karachi should take part in this campaign,” he said. No details of the campaign were given however.
In a related move, while addressing a conference held by the National Forum for Environment and Health (NFEH) at a local hotel on Wednesday, Nazim Mustafa Kamal called the city government’s budget for the next fiscal year as “environment-friendly” in which a major sum of Rs 1.8 billion has been allocated for environment-related projects. However, no details were given as to where this money would be spent.
Kamal said that despite these initiatives the tree planting campaign needed active participation from common citizens as they have the responsibility of protection and preservation of this natural asset.
He said that the cutting of trees had been completely banned in the city and anyone who would be seen cutting a tree would be arrested. However, he did not give any details of how many people had been arrested so far and what procedure was being followed to arrest people for the cutting down of trees. Citizens have complained in the past that when they try and check the cutting of trees in their neighbourhoods, the area town authorities usually turn a blind eye. Many have welcomed the move by the Nazim to arrest people cutting down trees but say that there is no information on how this can be done.
Another problem is that in most instances, civic agencies, including the City District Government Karachi, have been behind the massive cutting down of trees in the city. It may be mentioned, that several attempts to launch tree plantation campaigns in the city have met with failure.
A former city nazim also introduced date palm trees on the main streets and avenues of the city but millions were wasted in the project as most of these trees died due to improper planning, wrong choice of trees and poor maintenance. This fact has been ignored by city decision makers in the past as Eucalytus trees were planted by city authorities with disastrous results.
A recent report in The News revealed that Karachi suffers one of the worst ratios of trees to people as compared to other cities of its size in the world today. As a consequence, air quality in Karachi is one of the poorest in the region. One of the main factors for pollution are smoke emitting vehicles that are allowed to ply the city streets without much check.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
