Daily Times

Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday launched an ambitious five-year-long ‘Clean and Green Pakistan’ campaign aimed at beautifying the country and ensuring a better future of coming generations.

Addressing the launch of the campaign at the Prime Minister’s Office, the premier explained in detail the contours of the campaign. The federal cabinet had given the nod for the launch of the campaign in its meeting last month.

The prime minister recalled the crystal clear water streams in Islamabad, the beautiful lush green gardens of Lahore, the clean rivers where people used to fish, but regretted that it all had been polluted. However, he said it was reversible and recalled how Singapore River, which had turned into a sewerage stream, was converted to its original beauty.

The prime minister said the campaign would practically kick off on Saturday (October 13) with the president, prime minister, governors and all provincial chief ministers taking the lead in cleaning the country.

He made an impassioned appeal to the media, religious scholars, social workers, media personalities to be part of the campaign and urged the people to clean their surroundings for a healthy environment.

Khan said currently only around 42% of Pakistanis had access to toilets and sanitation facility and added that a number of tourists refrained from visiting the country because of dearth of facilities at tourist spots. He said an estimated 40,000 children were being killed each year because of unclean drinking water, while the cases of hepatitis were rising at an alarming rate across the country.

The prime minister announced a four-tier campaign that would start from bringing about a change in the mindset and would involve making cleanliness part of the syllabus, besides launching a mass awareness campaign. Dumping sites for waste disposal will be identified and a complete system of waste collection will be evolved, he said.

The second tier will include putting in place a monitoring system that will give cash rewards for outstanding cleanliness, while reprimand for those failing to meet the targets. The third tier will involve wide-scale construction of toilets across the country. The prime minister said all public and petrol and CNG stations had been directed to ensure that their toilets were clean and easily accessible to the people and said the people would be asked to send in pictures of dirty toilets, and action would be taken against those responsible.

He said that under the fourth tier advocacy would be conducted by scouts and volunteers to extend the scope of the campaign to every nook and corner of the country.

Khan said that under the campaign, efforts would be made to revive natural forests of Pakistan, besides measures for protecting the country’s wildlife, particularly the endangered species.

He said ten billion trees would be planted across the country in next five years on the pattern of billion trees planted in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He said that these would be the best counter measure to fight the climate change and added that Pakistan was ranked 60th in list of countries that were under threat of the climate change.

Khan said the government would adopt a multi-pronged approach to address the issue of solid waste management, discharge of effluent from factories and hospitals.

Published in Daily Times, October 9^th 2018.