Prime Minister Imran Khan will inaugurate the fresh plantation drive "Plant for Pakistan" today (Saturday) by planting a sapling while a total of 150 million saplings are expected to be planted across the country during the campaign.
Under the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami campaign of the PTI government, more than 1.5 million trees were planted in September last in a countrywide tree plantation drive. Ministry of Communications and Ministry of Climate Change signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in connection with afforestation campaign on Friday. Minister for Communications Murad Saeed and State Minister for Climate Change Zartaj Gul speaking on the occasion said the government was committed to retrieving the encroached forest land and planting trees.
The government has devised a plan to retrieve the encroached forest land in Punjab province and turn it into forests again by planting saplings there. All provincial governments have submitted their targets with the Ministry of Climate Change to plant saplings in their respective areas while plant distribution points will be established across the country for general public as well.
Ministry of Climate Change has also reached an agreement with a private company to plant saplings initially on 100 acres of land through drones. If the experiment proves successful, more plants will be planted through drone technology.
For transparent monitoring of the project, the ministry is intending to hire a private independent monitor like it did in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where the PTI claimed to have planted over one billion trees during its five year tenure in the government.
Advisor to Prime Minister on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam claimed that survival rate of plants in the KP is counted to be over 85 percent while four percent of the forest area stood expanded through the Billion Tree Project.
He said that different species of saplings have been identified for different areas to preserve the ecosystem and ecology while provincial governments will plant the saplings independently in their respective areas as per their PC-I submitted to the Ministry of Climate Change.