Tree plantation drive kicks off today

Karachi
The Sindh government has announced planting around 0.6 million saplings in its tree plantation campaign to start on Monday (Today) across the province.
At the same time a cleanliness drive will also kick off in the cities of Sindh.
The government has asked the citizens to help them in these campaigns, though it has not been mentioned as to how the exercises will be carried out.
Talking to The News on Sunday, Municipal Commissioner Masood Alam said the Karachi Municipal Corporation (KMC) did not have any credible data about the number of trees in Karachi.
He said civic bodies lift 40 percent of the garbage in Karachi daily but the remaining 3.5 tons was left on roads and narrow lanes.
According to some MQM legislators, the city has become a garbage den as towns have no funds to lift the garbage and also facing shortage of vehicles.
Alam informed this scribe that the district municipal corporations (DMCs) were responsible to lift the garbage and claimed that local government department and DMC will jointly launch the cleanliness campaign.
It is noteworthy that heavy plantation needs high quantity of water and Karachi city is facing acute water shortage.
Moreover, the citizens should be thankful to scavengers in the city who lift garbage in a significant quantity daily.
Another KMC officer, when contacted, said there were very few trees left in the city as majority of them have been chopped off by the land grabbers.
A Pakistan Muslim League-Functional MPA said the plantation and cleanliness campaigns were uphill tasks owing to the absence of local governments.
Sindh Minister for Local Bodies Sharjeel Memon was not available for comments.