Islamabad: (Parliament Times) Members of the Islamabad Devcom Centennial Leo Club (IDCLC) planted hundreds of saplings of local decorative and fruit trees in the Blue Area greenbelt on Monday despite the inclement weather. The plantation was supported by the Development Communications Network (Devcom-Pakistan) in collaboration with the Capital Development Authority (CDA) Urban Environment Wing-II. The objective of the plantation was to engage youth in further strengthening the IDCLC campaign “Grow a plant, Own a tree”, founded by well-known environmentalist Munir Ahmed three years back on self-help basis. Young volunteers, university students, children from different schools and common citizens have been part of this ever growing campaign.
Speaking on the occasion, Munir Ahmed, Devcom-Pakistan Director and founder of the IDCLC and the Campaign said, “More than 10,000 saplings have been planted by the young citizens along with the seniors and concerned common citizens in three years of time on self-help basis. Planting samplings is an easy task that could be done by the local citizens with the help of local authorities and municipalities, city managers, district management, non-governmental organizations, civil society organisations with their own resources. Federal and provincial governments need not planning to bring in huge funds to do it. Instead of planning to plant billions of saplings in the years to come, the incoming PTI government should focus on saving forests by increasing security deployed to safeguard forests, equip them with the modern technology and techniques to combat the timber mafia. Citizens can plant saplings but cannot fight against the nexus of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats and the timber mafia. There we need federal and provincial governments to chip in for the protection of forests and to stop indiscriminate tree-cutting.”
The concept of the campaign ‘Grow a plant, Own a tree’ is to take care of the saplings after they have been planted so that the plants should grow in healthy manner. The person who had planted the sapling should have the responsibility to make the plant grow for its survival and to have the pleasure of owning a tree at the end.
Munir Ahmed the concept is relatively new and mostly the people don’t take care of the plants afterwards. Therefore we try to find the custodians of the plants nearby. Usually they are the local communities, schools and local groups of the people. The saplings planted on Monday would be taken care by the CDA urban environment wing. The traders’ associations of three plazas situated in front of the greenbelt have also ensured to take of the planted saplings.
Educationist Ujala Siddique and the CDA Deputy Director urban Environment Akhtar Rasool distributed certificates of participation and appreciation among the participants. Akhtar Rasool said it is quite pleasure to have young supporting the tree plantation in the city while it was an everyday on-going process for the CDA to plant saplings and take of the vegetation cover. He said citizens’ role is very important in in keeping the city clean and green.
The IDCLC president Haares Munir said their club has a vigorous plan to support city managers to engage youth in keeping the city’s green outlook. He also urged the CDA and MCI to adequately practice the cleanliness services. We see garbage dumping up all over, littering even in the posh areas is quite visible, health, water and sanitation problems especially in the rural zones are rising. The mushroom growth of illegal housing societies is posing great threat to the green nature of the city – that has been third beautiful city in the world ranking.
