Tree plantation campaign a step in the right direction: Cheng Xizhong

Chinese scholar Prof Cheng Xizhong hoped the decision to launch a three-month tree plantation campaign to create new jobs for daily-wage workers affected by the countrywide lockdown would prove very productive.

In an article carried by Gwadar Pro App on Thursday, he noted that the Forestry Department of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was going to launch the campaign, employing thousands of daily-wage workers.

He expressed his confidence that the campaign would achieve three important goals simultaneously.

First, it would solve the livelihood problem of the daily-wage workers who were rendered unemployed due to the pandemic. It is noted that the federal government and provincial governments have formulated forestation plans to plant 10 billion trees across the country.

Pakistan has a population of more than 200 million, which means an average of 50 trees per person. Therefore, this is a very big project. If other provinces all follow the example of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and immediately launch the planting campaign, hundreds of thousands or even millions of jobs would be created.

Second, there were a large number of poor daily-wage workers in big cities. A large-scale tree planting campaign would prompt them to leave the big cities, which would not only help them solve the employment problem, but it would also reduce the population pressure in the cities. Population evacuation is also conducive to controlling the spread of the coronavirus.

Third, he added that large-scale tree planting in Pakistan was a project of strategic significance. Pakistan is a country with limited water resources. Planting trees helps to increase green coverage, avoid soil erosion and enhance the ability to cope with natural disasters such as mudslides and landslides.

At the same time, planting trees could purify the air, beautify the environment, and create a better living environment for all the people.