KARACHI: It is high time that citizens of Karachi come out and take action on their own to stop the menacing activity of tree cutting to prevent the city’s environment from complete destruction.

The president of the National Forum for Environment and Health (NFEH), Mohammad Naeem Qureshi, stated this on Tuesday as he addressed a protest demonstration at a road intersection here on Sharea Faisal.

The protest demonstration was organised to protest the chopping of some 78 trees in the vicinity by the administration of a nearby private building.

Cutting of 78 trees by private building administration slammed

A large number of concerned citizens, including women and children, representatives of non-governmental organisations, Rao Saif, Imran Rafi, and Asia Ishaq of the Pak Sarzameen Party, among others, attended the protest demonstration.

The NFEH president said that tree cutting had been taking place in the city on a large scale, but the provincial government and the city administration had yet to take any punitive action.

He said that concerned citizens had been left with no choice but to become proactive in order to prevent further chopping of trees as otherwise, Karachi would experience a sharp increase in atmospheric temperature while its citizens could face another intense heatwave that could cause fatalities.

He said that influential people in the city were acting extremely irresponsibly as they had been resorting to the grave civic crime of cutting trees just to preserve their own vested interest.

He said that relevant civic agencies in the city like the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation and the district municipal corporations were doing nothing and playing the role of a silent spectator to this dangerous situation.

Mr Qureshi added that given the present circumstances, conservation of existing tree cover in the city had become a lot more difficult than planting new trees. He urged the provincial authorities to take steps to ensure protection of existing trees and also to penalise those involved in tree chopping. He said the private, commercial, and government organisations should be made to abide by the law, which prevents tree cutting.

He said that the concerned citizens should take to the streets to protest any new instance of tree cutting in the city.

Published in Dawn, June 12th, 2019