Daily Times

The Pakistan Business Forum (PBF) has the urged provincial governments to prohibit housing developments on agricultural land. PBF Vice President Jahanara Wattoo while addressing a press conference on Monday said that between 20% and 30% of Punjab’s fertile agricultural land had been turned into residential colonies and industrial estates in the last two decades. This had put the nation’s food security in jeopardy, she added. She said that housing societies and industrial units had taken over 70 per cent of the farmland in Lahore, the capital of Punjab. She urged Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to immediately convene a farmers’ conference to solicit their suggestions for agricultural development and implementation of a farming policy. The provincial governments must also follow the National Climate Change Policy to promote vertical growth in the urban areas to protect agricultural land from increasing construction activities, she maintained She said that provincial governments should introduce laws that make it mandatory to seek permission from the provincial cabinets to convert green land to brown land for residential purposes. She said that there was a need to encourage vertical growth in cities so that agricultural land and tree cover in the country could be protected.