Pleasant surprise for Bannu to be adjudged KP’s cleanest city

PESHAWAR: It was a pleasant surprise to know that Bannu, an old and generally congested city, has been adjudged as the cleanest city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The rating was done by the Clean and Green Index. Bannu scored 57.50 points. The study focused on 13 cities in Punjab and seven in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The cities in Sindh and Balochistan weren’t part of the survey. The criteria for the study wasn’t explained in the recent press release issued by the Clean and Green Index. It only gave the score recorded by the cities that were surveyed. Cleanliness and sanitation were obviously kept in view while judging the cities. Greenery too must have been a factor while finalizing the result. Bannu is a historic city and is the gateway to North Waziristan. It is surrounded by vast tracts of greenery with crops and orchards. Bannu’s dates, figs and spices are famous and popular. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Kohat followed Bannu in the rankings with 52.97 points. Abbottabad, which one thought would score the highest points in the province due to its reputation as a city of top educational institutions, army installations and parks, with 52.72 points was placed third. Peshawar was next in line with 45.39 points only. Mardan followed with just 34.17 points and Swat with 30.97 points. Dera Ismail Khan lagged far behind with 21.19 points. It meant that of the seven cities surveyed in the province, Dera Ismail Khan was the least clean and green city.Though Bannu was the cleanest city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, it was a lowly 10th in ranking compared with the cities that were surveyed in Punjab. Attock, also a garrison city in Punjab, was top of the list with 76.53 points. The next cities in ranking, all located in Punjab, were Bahawalpur (74.8 points), Lahore (74.3), Gujrat (70.48), Rawalpindi (69.94), Sahiwal (65.88), Gujranwala (64.3) and Multan (60.83).After these nine cities in Punjab, Bannu was at number 10 in the two provinces in terms of cleanliness. The Punjab cities that followed Bannu were Sialkot, Sargodha, Dera Ghani Khan and Murree. The officials and some people in Bannu were thrilled when their city was declared the cleanest city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. They declared Bannu as the “clean green champion” of the province and expressed pride in their city. Bannu’s deputy commissioner, retired Captain Mohammad Zubair Khan Niazi, as the head of the district administration was honoured for leading Bannu to be adjudged the cleanest city when a turban was placed on his head during the Friday prayers at Masjid Mall Mandi.