Auction for trees

EDITORIAL: They say old trees die on their roots, but not on the campuses of Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC). The corporation auctions the trees to meet its financial constraints. Described on paper as ‘bushes’ and ‘deadwood’ some 3,600 trees of various varieties, including the rosewood tree, have vanished; the most recent auction for 1,500 trees on 20 kanals in Rawalpindi for Rs 7 lakh is a strong case in point.

And as this carnage continued neither the environmental agencies nor the high-ups in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had any inkling of what was going on, and if they had there was no action on their part to step in to protect and preserve trees.

Last month, as Senator Irfan Siddiqui of Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) raised this issue in a Senate committee the Director General PBC asked in return what else he could do to meet the arrears of a billion rupees. Who is right and who is wrong there is no easy answer to this question, excepting observation how cruel are the times that the nation’s principal and oldest source — radio (the broadcasting of programmes for the public to listen to) — of reaching out to people has fallen on such hard times.

The world famous broadcasting networks like BBC, VoA and DW, too, spend more than what they earn, but they don’t have to auction their trees to meet their day-to-day expenditures. Their governments heavily subsidise their expenditures. The auction for trees was discussed in a meeting held on September 2, 2021 to “review options for revenue generation from the PBC’s own sources”.

And the auction for trees was identified as a way out to bridge the budgetary shortfall. The PBC then was in dire cash crisis as its accumulated liabilities were in excess of about a billion rupees, which included medical bills, commutation charges, PM’s assistance package to families of deceased employees and maintenance of broadcasting equipment.

But instead of coming to the rescue of PBC it was left to its own devices to deal with the growing challenge. And there came up the option of auctioning the trees on its campuses all over the country. Of course the PBC is planting 30 trees for one lost through auction, but that is a poor bargain. It should preserve the existing trees and plant more, as is the call of the times in the fight against global warming and climate change. And at the same time the government should look into financial hardships confronting PBC — for there is no alternative to it.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022