The district government of Multan and the USAID-Punjab Youth Workforce Development (PYWD) Project, on Wednesday, jointly inaugurated the ‘Green Multan, Green Pakistan Campaign’ in a tree plantation event, held at the Fort Qasim.
“The purpose of this event was to complement the district government’s commitment to plant more than 200,000 trees in Multan to improve the environment”, the Deputy Commissioner (DC) Multan and the chief guest of the event, Mudassir Riaz Malik, said.
Malik further said that Pakistan was facing different environmental issues including deforestation, air pollution, climate change, pesticide misuse, soil erosion, natural disasters and desertification. These were serious environmental problems and they were getting worse as the country’s economy expands and the population grows, he said. Although the government departments had taken certain initiatives to stop environmental degradation, stringent concerted efforts were required by both the public and private sector to overcome the exacerbating situation by planting maximum trees for clean and green Pakistan, he maintained.
The DC agreed to join hands together in supporting the Government of Pakistan’s tree plantation efforts and district government’s ‘Green Multan, Green Pakistan Campaign.’ “We are committed to augment the efforts of district government of Multan as well as other PYWD focus districts of South Punjab, including Bahawalpur, Lodhran and Muzaffargarh, in the tree plantation campaign by donating them 40,000 plants and organizing public awareness sessions on the Significance of Tree Plantation in Environment Conservation, remarked Qaisar Nadeem, another official present at the event.
These events would be instrumental to PYWD Project’s behaviour-change campaign, and would help sensitize the project beneficiaries, ie the youth and local communities, by fostering constructive attitude and responsible citizenship towards making Pakistan green and prosperous, he added.
Head of Agriculture Department Asif Raza, Additional Deputy Commissioner (Revenue) Multan Mir Nawaz Bharwana, Principal Vocational Training Tanveer Sheikh Rana and Jamshed Iqbal were also present at the event.
Published in Daily Times, September 6th 2018.
