Chitral Heritage & Environment Protection Society has asked Tourism Corporation Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (TCKP) for evolving cleaning strategy for Shandur. The society on Saturday arranged a protest signature camp on Sher Shah Soori, Opposition, Railways Station Peshawar Cantonment, for creating awareness for protection of environment in Shandur, district Chitral.
Talking to this scribe, Chairman, Chitral Heritage & Environment Protection Society, Rahmat Ali Jaffar Dost said Shandur Festival is organized on the tallest natural stadium at Shandur and a large number of domestic and foreign tourists attended the event. Similarly, thousands of locals from Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan are also turning the area near Shandur Lake into a make-shift village. He said that after the concluding of Shandur Festival, the visitors returned to their areas and left their garbage behind and funds to the tune of millions of rupees were allocated for their disposal, but no arrangement was made for the cleaning of Shandur.
The society, he said, since last 15 years was cleaning the area including Shandur Ground, space of tents, banks of lake and adjacent areas through their volunteers without charging a single penny neither from provincial government nor from any non-governmental organisation. The civil society activist said Shandur was a big natural gift and its protection was their joint responsibility. He said he ran volunteer Green and Clean Pakistan Campaigns not only in Shandur, rather in the whole country. The society is holding cleanliness campaigns from Sea View Karachi to Shalimar Garden, Lahore Fort, Minar-e-Pakistan, Lake View Park Islamabad, China Park, Ayub Park (Rawalpindi), Jinnah Park, Shahi Bagh, Bagh-e-Naran (Peshawar) to Kagh-Lasht Chitral consecutively for the last 15 years. But, he said that such huge responsibility was out of their capacity. He appealed Chief of Army Staff (CoAS) Qamar Javed Bajwa, Governor KP Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, Corps Commander Lieutenant General Nazir Butt, Chief Minister Pervez Khattak and Minister Climate Change Zahid Hameed for protecting Shandur from environmental pollution.