Mayor kicks off tree plantation campaign

Karachi Mayor Wasim Akhtar has kicked off a campaign for tree plantation all over the city along with six DMCs though it is yet to be identified how this operation will be conducted.

He said on Thursday there was an acute water shortage in Karachi and he had already announced a tree plantation campaign.

According to official sources of the KMC, the authorities don’t have any credible statistics about the number of trees in Karachi as there used to be a large number of trees but the bulk of them have been chopped.

In 2015, the PPP government had announced planting around 0.6 million saplings in its tree plantation campaign to start across the province but the campaign fizzled out as the city was having an acute water deficiency. At the same time, a cleanliness drive was launched as an alternative but it nevertheless ended in vain.

The mayor said civic bodies lifted 40 per cent of the garbage daily and the remaining 3.5 tons remained on roads and narrow lanes. He said he had repeatedly stated that the city had become nothing but a garbage den as the local government was running out of funds to uplift the garbage.