Body formed to probe anomalies in Billion Tree Tsunami project

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Department of Forestry, Environment and Wildlife have formed a high-level committee to probe the alleged anomalies in the ‘Billion Tree Tsunami’ project in the central districts of the province. 

The committee headed by the additional secretary of the department has formally started its work and would submit its report to the secretary within two days, sources told The News.The committee members Friday started visiting the concerned districts - Peshawar, Nowshera, Mardan and Swabi.

“We are visiting the plantation sites and the nurseries concerned and are interviewing the officials, nursery owners, labourers and farmers who are taking part in the project,” said a member of the probe committee.

He observed that he didn’t see any irregularity in the project at any stage. The volume of the project is too big and the reports about anomalies are based on mere speculation, he said. However, things would become clear only after the completion of the inquiry, he added.

There were reports that special assistant to the chief minister on forest, environment and wildlife Mohammad Ishtiaq Urmar has taken notice of the alleged corrupt practices in the project in the central districts of the province and had asked the Anti-Corruption Establishment to look into the matter.

However, when contacted, Ishtiaq Urmar told this reporter that the reports about corruption were misconceived. He said he never said that corruption had been committed in the project.“I just wanted to have a proper check on the people involved in the project to ensure transparency,” he maintained.

He said there was a proper monitoring system for the project and three different quarters were making third party validation of the drive.He said that it was a big project wherein some 40,000 people have been given jobs.

Asked as if he had written a letter to the Anti-Corruption Establishment to probe the alleged anomalies, he neither confirmed nor denied it, but said he wanted to have a check in place to discourage corrupt practices.

There are, however, reports that irregularities have been made in award of contracts for supply of saplings to different nurseries and purchase of the plants on higher prices.Some reports suggested that the number of planted trees were far less than the budget approved for the purpose.

The probe committee too would specifically investigate these allegations, a committee member said.Reached for comments, project director Shabbir Hussain claimed that irregularities and corruption in the project was out of question.

He said that such a mechanism had been introduced for the award of contracts to nurseries and individuals and a monitoring system put in place that it was next to impossible to embezzle the funds.

He said they were determined to plant one billion trees at a cost of Rs22 billion with Rs22 per sapling. He said the drive was being conducted in three phases of which one phase has already been completed and plantation has been made on 12,000 hectares of land by planting 160 million saplings.

He said the activities of the project are properly displayed on its official website and Facebook page and all details were available over there.He added that the third party validation system was quite strict.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the international organization, which conducts third party validation in its recent report, has declared the project’s activities successful so far.On the other hand, the Anti-Corruption Establishment is stated to be efficient enough to check corruption.

Though the special assistant to the chief minister lauded the Anti-Corruption Establishment for its “efficiency”, some reports revealed that it recently issued a notice to its current director to vacate a house that he has been illegally occupying in Pakistan Forest Institute (PFI) after which the story of the alleged corruption in the project was carried in the media.