PM Imran launches 'Clean and Green Pakistan' campaign
The campaign will officially kick off on Saturday, October 13.
ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) - Prime Minister Imran Khan Monday launched an ambitious five-year long “Clean and Green Pakistan” campaign aimed at beautifying the country and tackling climate change.
Addressing the launch of the campaign at the PM Office in Islamabad, he said the federal cabinet gave the nod for the launch of the campaign in its meeting last month.
He said the campaign would practically kick off on Saturday (October 13) with himself, the president, governors, and chief ministers taking the lead in cleaning the country.
He made an impassioned appeal to the media, the religious scholars, Imams at the mosques, social workers, media personalities to be part of the campaign and urge the people to clean their surroundings for a healthy environment.
Imran Khan said currently only around 42% of Pakistanis had access to toilets and sanitation facility and many a tourists refrained from visiting the country because of dearth of such facilities, particularly at the tourist spots.
He added an estimated 40,000 children are killed each year because of unclean drinking water, while the cases of Hepatitis are rising at an alarming rate across the country.
The prime minister announced a four tiered 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 would be identified and a complete system of waste collection evolved, even down to the village level and efforts would be made to use this waste for generating electricity.
The second tier would include putting in place a monitoring system that would give cash rewards for outstanding cleanliness, while reprimand for those failing to meet the targets. He was optimist that with time and cleanliness all around, the people will themselves realise its importance and will be part of the process.
The third tier would involve wide scale construction of toilets across the country. He said all public and petrol and CNG stations have 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 the 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.
Under the campaign, an effort would be made at reviving the natural forests of Pakistan, besides measures for protecting the country’s wildlife and particularly the endangered species, he added.
