Pak green project in wake of COVID-19 productive

BEIJING: Chinese scholar Prof Cheng Xizhong hoped Pakistan’s government decision launching a three-month plantation campaign to create new jobs for daily income group affected by the countrywide lockdown will prove very productive. In an article carried by Gwadar Pro App on Thursday, he noted that the Forestry Department of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province was going to launch the campaign, employing thousands of daily income workers.

He expressed his confidence that the campaign will achieve the effect of “one arrow aiming at three eagles”, which means doing one thing to achieve three goals at the same time.

First, it will solve the livelihood problem of daily income workers who are unemployed due to the epidemic. It is noted that the federal government and provincial governments have formulated afforestation plans to plant 10 billion trees all over the country. Pakistan has a population of more than 200 million, which means an average of 50 trees per person. Therefore, this is a very big project. If other provinces all follow the example of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province and immediately launch the planting campaign, hundreds of thousands or even millions of jobs will be created.

Second, there are a large number of poor daily income workers in big cities. A large-scale tree planting campaign will lead a large number of daily income workers to leave the big cities.