Young leaders briefed on community services

Islamabad

Islamabad Devcom Leo Club was launched here on Sunday and young leaders of the club were briefed about engaging themselves and others for the welfare of the community services.

Asif Shuja Khan, chairman, IWATCH, and former Director General Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (Pak-EPA) was invited as a guest speaker at the ceremony.

While addressing on the occasion, he said that almost 40 per cent of the cooked food is wasted in Pakistan especially in the ceremonies, while the developing countries like Pakistan waste 50 per cent of the total food produced. The food waste shows our extravagant behaviour that is totally against our religious faith and teachings and social values. Despite all Islamic teachings, the food waste goes on rise even in the month of Ramazan. The food waste has enormous social and environmental implications. The extravagant food consumption creates shortage of food firstly for the other people, and also create price hike.

Referring to the FAO study, he said “Roughly one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally, which amounts to about 1.3 billion tons per year. This inevitably also means that huge amounts of the resources used in food production are used in vain, and that the greenhouse gas emissions caused by production of food that gets lost or wasted are also emissions in vain.”

Speaking on the occasion, ED Devcom Munir Ahmed said that Pakistan may be one of the countries where food deficiency would be hitting the red line soon, if we do not check our food consumption habits and control the food loss in the production and storage. He suggested the young environmentalists to begin with a Food Bank. The left over consumable cooked food could be secured from different hotels and restaurants that could be served to the needy ones.

Lion Naeem Hashmi also spoke on the occasion and briefed the young leaders about the scope of the activities they could get the other youth engaged in for the welfare of the community services.