GUJRAT: Six Punjab cities, including Gujrat and Lahore, have been nominated for the excellent performance award for improving conditions as per Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Clean & Green Pakistan Index (C&GPI), that will bring additional development funds for these cities.

As many as 20 cities of the province had been included in the C&GPI competition for improving the conditions with regard to 89 different aspects (points), including heritage, parks, roads, beautification, public toilets etc.

The Punjab local government and community development department issued a letter to the deputy commissioners of at least six districts of Punjab, informing them of the decision of federal ministry of climate change about assessment of the cities included in the CGPI contest.

According to the letter issued by the department’s secretary on June 30 the last, the cities of Lahore, Gujrat, Bahawalpur, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi and Attock have been nominated for the award.

Honour aims at encouraging respective administrations

Out of the three cities of Gujranwala division considered for the award -- Gujrat, Gunranwala and Sialkot -- only Gujrat has won the nomination due to the hard work and policies of the district administration, an official said.

He added that as neither the federal nor the provincial govenrments had provided any extra funds for running the CGPI campaign, the district administration had to use the available machinery and human resource of local bodies, besides the donations of local philanthropists.

However, he said that a sum of around Rs100 million would be provided for the development of the cities nominated for the award in CGPI.

As per the govenrment’s policy, the best performance award was meant for the cities showing improvement in various fields, particularly in the provision of civic amenities, to encourage the respective DCs and commissioners and acknowledge their efforts.

The DCs have also been directed by the local government department to prepare a list of three most diligent officers in their respective districts for their extraordinarily performance with regard to the CGPI campaign.

The awards will be given by the prime minister himself in the next few days at a ceremony expected to be held in Islamabad.

The managements of the winning cities have also been asked to prepare a 50-seconds footage comprising a message by the concerned commissioners and DCs, highlighting the impact of the PM’s CGPI initiative, efforts of local administration, community participation and sustainability mechanism and send it to the PM office’s social media cell within three days.

Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2020