BTT Afforestation project: KP government urged for scale upgrade of forest guards

Forest guards, serving duties under the Billion Tree Tsunami Afforestation project have urged the provincial government to materialize its commitment regarding their scale upgradation, which it made with them after achieving extraordinary success in the project's and acclaimed it globally.
Speaking at a news conference at Peshawar Press Club on Monday, the Forest Guards Foresters and D/Rangers Association Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Central president Haji Muhammad Zeb Khan said that the BTT Afforestation project has got world recognition due to extraordinary performance. He added the PTI government gained popularity at world fora because of this project.
However, he strongly opposed the government to plan to include Khyber Pakhtunkhwa share in the billion tree tsunami project, which was against interest of national and department.
He said that the BTT Afforestation project had completed in a short span of time and established record at the world level. He said that the provincial government had made announcement to give reward in shape of scale upgradation to all the employees after getting extraordinary success of the BTT project. He informed that a total of 3,000 BTT project employees were awaiting scale up-gradation.
But, he regretted that instead to issue official notification regarding up-gradation of BTT project employees, the department has started recoveries from employees on name of monitoring and inquiry. He said it would be impossible for employees to continue duties under the prevailing circumstances. He informed that a forest guard is responsible to monitor around 562 acre lands in the forests.
On the other hand, he said the government has included two billion saplings plantation target for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under PM's announcement of the Billion Tree Tsunami project, which would be initiated across the country, which would be unable to achieve in the province.