02 March 2004	Tuesday	10 Muharram 1425

ISLAMABAD, March 1: Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (Pepa) has expressed its reservations over the relentless cutting down of trees in the capital city, official sources told Dawn.

They said for the last few years, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) was felling trees in and around Islamabad, on the pretext of pollen allergy and security reasons, without taking into account the departments concerned.

Talking to Dawn, a senior official of the agency, said: "If the CDA wants to remove paper mulberry then at least it should direct its staff not to cut other species."

The CDA should mark trees other than paper mulberry so that complete wiping off green-belts could be averted. In response to a question, he said pollen allergy was a worldwide phenomenon, and even in the US there were certain areas where people suffered from pollen allergies. But in the US, the authorities never embarked upon such a massive scale deforestation like the CDA was doing in the city.

Over the last few years, a number of projects had been discussed to control pollen production mainly by paper mulberry but in the end the CDA ended up cutting down trees.

If the CDA feels that felling of paper mulberry is the only way to get rid of pollens, which are produced by every tree during spring time, then it should also start planting of other species that are considered less harmful to asthmatic patients.

Everybody knows that thinning of green-belts has been carried out for security reasons. "But I tell you, this is something really dangerous which the authorities concerned should take care of, otherwise time is not far away when Islamabad will also be enlisted among the polluted cities of the country," he said.