Daily Times

KARACHI: The Social Forestry Karachi, a subsidiary of the Sindh Forest Department, has refused to provide saplings to the Edhi Foundation for mass tree plantation campaign, said foundation’s head Faisal Edhi on Monday.

“Karachi is vulnerable to heatwaves and being the biggest charity organisation in Pakistan, we want to cope with extreme weather emergencies, besides reducing the impact of climate change for which we have decided to launch a mass tree plantation drive but the department has refused to give us saplings,” Faisal told Daily Times.

A deadly heatwave that hit Karachi in 2015 killed over 1,300 people in three days and another heatwave in May this year killed over 65 people in a day in Karachi. Environmental experts have warned that Karachi is prone to severe heatwave in future.

“Given the risks posed by climate change, we decided to initiate Green Karachi, Healthy Karachi project under which we would plant trees at mass scale. In the initial phase, we will plant 10, 000 saplings in Korangi Industrial area as it is one of the polluted places in the city and we hope that the tree plantation will help reduce pollution level in the area,” said Faisal.

He claimed that his request for provision of saplings did not receive any response from the Forest Department.

“We dispatched vehicles to different nurseries being operated by the Forest Department but they refused and sent the vehicles back without providing saplings,” he said, adding that the Edhi Foundation had so far planted 500 saplings in Korangi Industrial area.

He lamented that the charity was unable to initiate its mass tree plantation drive in the city due to lack of cooperation from the Forest Department.

“We are waiting for the Forest Department to provide us sampling,” he said, and alleged that the Forest Department was providing saplings to fake non-governmental organisation (NGOs).

However, officials of the department denied allegations and said that the department had not received any letter from the Edhi Foundation. “We haven’t received any letter. May be the Edhi Foundation is contacting directly to nurseries,” said Qazi Abdul Jabbar, conservator, Social Forestry Karachi.

He said that the department had received an order of 200,000 saplings from a law enforcement agency due to which there was a burden on department’s nurseries. “But if Edhi Foundation will contact us we will provide them saplings for which they will have to pay a meagre amount of Rs 2 for each sapling,” said Qazi Jabbar.

Published in Daily Times, August 7^th 2018.