KARACHI: The Sindh government has decided to develop a forest area over 20,000 acres between Karachi and Hyderabad to improve the overall environmental conditions in both cities where huge land belonging to the forest department is lying barren.

This emerged at a meeting presided over by Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Friday at CM House.

Issuing the necessary directives to the forest department for developing forests blocks, the CM said each block should be spread over 10,000 acres. This would not only improve the environmental pollution of Karachi and Hyderabad, but also result in increasing the surface area of forest covered land, which is at present 3.3 million acres, in the province amounting to 10 per cent of the total land.

He said the forests could be watered through drip irrigation system.

The meeting was attended by chief secretary Rizwan Memon, principal secretary to CM Sohail Rajput, chief conservators and other officers concerned. Giving a presentation, forest & wildlife secretary Asif Hyder Shah said that the total forest land in the province of Sindh is 3.3 million acres which comes to 10 per cent of Sindh’s surface area. The forest includes mangroves or coastal forests, barrage area agricultural sustainability through trees/forestry, riverine forests and irrigation plantation (IP) and range lands — desert-trees as tools for drought management.

Forest covered land in Sindh is 3.3 million acres, which comes to 10 per cent of total land

He showed a base map of 140,914 square kilometers of forests which include irrigation plantation over an area of 202,622 acres, riverine forests over 595,511 acres, range lands over 1,129,000 acres, and mangroves of 1,500,000 acres.

Talking about the achievements of the forest department, the official said that mangroves have been planted over and area of 175,000 acres during the last five years. “We broke the Guinness world record of planting trees in one day in 2009, and again set a new record by planting 847,275 in 2013. On this the chief minister gave him a new target of planting one million mangroves in March. “I would personally launch the drive on March 23,” the chief minister said.

Giving details of major achievements of the forest department during 2017-18, the forest secretary said that 21,000 acres or 8.92 million mangrove plants were planted in six month, another 21,000 acres would be planted in June 2018, and in order to protect the new plants a community watch and ward system has been developed. He added that natural regeneration of about 180 to 200 million plants has been made.

The chief minister was told that riverine forests over 5,000 acres or 100 million seeds have been broadcasted. New IPs has been made over 1,000 acres which come to 700,000 plants; 12 million container plants in the nurseries have also been developed. The forest department has also carried out linear plantation over an area of 400 kilometres.

The chief minister directed the secretary for forest to issue notices to the lessees who have violated lease conditions. He also directed him to remove encroachment from the land of forest.

Audit ordered

Taking serious notice of huge expenditures on payments of pensions, CM on Thursday ordered for a ‘high level’ investigation into the issue.

He issued the order while presiding over a meeting of the three-year budget strategy, 2016-17 to 2020-21, at CM House.

The meeting was attended by the principal secretary to the CM, and all the concerned officers of finance, planning and development and Sindh Revenue Board (SRB).

During a presentation, the chief minister was told that during 2015-16 fiscal, pension payments were recorded at Rs52.8 billion and they went up to Rs70bn in 2016-17. They continued to show the increase this fiscal year when it were counted as Rs76bn. On this the CM said the amount being spent on the payment of pension was extraordinarily huge and “seems to be dubious”.

He ordered his principal secretary to constitute a high-power inquiry and audit committee to investigate the payments. “The audit and inquiry should be launched from the districts where huge payments have been made,” he said.

He added the audit must be carried out professionally and in a transparent manner.

“You can hire the services of any professional auditor, if you need it,” he said.

The chief minister also directed the finance department to computerise the entire pension system, along with the payments, and number of pensioners.

Mr Shah was told that in 2015-16 the development expenditure was Rs137.3bn, in 2016-16 it swelled to Rs210.1bn, and in 2017-18 it was Rs344.1bn.

The meeting was told that during the last three years the revenue receipts had shown an increase of 8.9 per cent while the next year an increase of 14pc was expected.

The chief minister asked his finance and planning and development team to make budget strategy, particularly relating to development as per projected figures.

It was also pointed out that in the head of services on sales tax Rs61.5bn were received in 2015-16, Rs78.5bn in 2016-17, and Rs100bn were expected in 2017-18; while in 2018-19 it would be more than Rs115bn.

Karachi Circular Railway

CM Shah, during a meeting with the Chinese Ambassador Yao Jing who called on him at CM House, said the people of Karachi were expecting work on the much-anticipated Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) project to begin. He said he had discussed its financial cost with the CPEC authorities, but it could not be started on the birth anniversary of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

The visiting ambassador was quoted by a spokesperson of CM House as telling the chief minister that the KCR was in the pipeline and its financial close was expected by the end of next month.

The chief minister said his team was in China and with the support of Ambassador Yao Jing, it would be approved.

He hoped the work on the KCR project would begin on March 23.

“I am going to give the good news to the people of Karachi in March who need KCR so dearly,” he said.

In the meeting they also discussed other projects including the Dhabeji Special Economic Zone, and Keti Bandar Power Project. The spokesperson said the Chinese ambassador on the invitation of the chief minister promised to visit Thar next month.

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2018