Ministry closely monitoring plantation drive

Islamabad : The Climate Change Ministry is collecting data from all provincial departments about ongoing plantation drive to get to know whether all provinces are going to achieve the target set for this season in line with the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan.

According to the details, the complete data is yet to be received but the initial findings showed that the plantation drive is successfully moving ahead as planned by the federal and provincial governments.

Almost 7,50,000 scouts are participating in 674 events that are being organized at various locations. The plantation drive is also under way in all provinces and it is encouraging to note that the non-governmental and civil society organizations enthusiastically played their role and helped increase green areas in the country.

The students of schools, colleges and universities are participating in the plantation drive and have also made new plantation records in various cities.

The record showed that there was a target to plant 540 million trees in the country--Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa (194 million), Sindh (140 million), Azad Jammu and Kashmir (98 million), Punjab (74.5 million), Gilgit-Baltistan (20 million) and Balochistan (13.5 million).

The plantation drive is part of the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami programme and the government wants to plant 3.2 billion trees till 2023. Despite having limited financial resources a huge amount of money is being spent to achieve plantation targets.

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam has said that the plantation drive is underway and they would hopefully achieve the target set by Prime Minister Imran Khan. “The progress on plantation campaigns improves every year and now we are right in the direction to plant 3.2 billion trees till 2023,” he said.