MUZAFFARABAD: Azad Jammu and Kashmir’s acting Prime Minister Chaudhry Latif Akbar on Thursday kicked off “Clean Muzaffarabad” campaign, amid a pledge to expand it to the whole of the state.

“Being the capital, Muzaffarabad is the face of our state and as civilised citizens it’s our moral and religious obligation to keep it as much clean as possible,” he told a big gathering in Gojra neighbourhood, where he launched the campaign by symbolically shoveling garbage from a dust heap in a wheelbarrow.

AJK minister for school education Mian Abdul Waheed, minister for environment Shazia Akbar, heads of the civic bodies and divisional and district administration officials were also present on the occasion.

Soon after assuming the office of acting premier early this week, Mr Akbar had chaired a meeting of all concerned to launch this campaign from November 13. The city was divided in several sectors and teams were constituted by the officials to carry out the cleanliness drive. “A clean and refreshing city will help us all breathe in unpolluted air and resultantly most of the infectious diseases contracted from unhygienic environment can be prevented,” the acting premier said.

In various neighbourhoods, he stressed upon residents to avoid littering and instead dump their household refuse at the designated spots in degradable polythene bags, which they could obtain from their respective civic body.

Taking stock of drainage of water onto the roads either from the faulty water supply lines or overflowing water tanks, he also directed the Muzaffarabad Municipal Corporation and the Public Health Engineering Department to resolve this problem without further ado.

The acting premier announced that the campaign would be extended even to the rural areas, which were home to some of the breathtakingly beautiful tourist resorts.

“We have sites that are much more beautiful than many famous tourist resorts not only in Pakistan but across the world. But unfortunately, we are marring their beauty by disrespecting the Islamic tenet of cleanliness,” he said, adding, unpolluted and trash free resorts could attract huge tourist influx and thus help people strengthen their economy. — Tariq Naqash

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2014