SWABI, April 20: Fuel wood used for curing Virginia tobacco has led to the ruthless axing of a variety of trees in the district and other tobacco growing areas of the NWFP, leading to deforestation and environmental degradation. During the tobacco curing season each year, about 4.2 million maunds fuel wood is burnt by 28,000 to 30,000 distilleries, for which thousands of trees are chopped, according to sources in tobacco purchasing companies.

Provincial general secretary of the Anjuman Kashtkaran Ismail Jan Khan said that the distilleries were located in Swabi, Mardan, Mansehra, Sher Gar and Buner and they used fuel wood due to non-availability of gas in the tobacco growing districts.

Mr Khan said: “Each distillery consumes from 18 to 20 maunds of fuel wood in one operation and conducts seven to eight operations a season, requiring 140 to 160 maunds fuel wood.”

In the rainy season, the use of wood increased, he added.

The ruthless cutting of trees has been continuing since long, badly affecting environment, damaging climate and destroying the greenery.

Environmentalists said that the axing of such a large number of trees in the region had already led to an increase in temperature and invited the green house gases effects but no one had evaluated the environmental implications.

In Swabi and other tobacco growing areas of the province, there are no modern techniques to cure tobacco with gas instead of wood.

“In developed world, the tobacco curing process is done by using gas which also results in the production of tobacco of better quality, said Mr Khan.

Environmentalists said that according to the environment rules, each grower was bound to plant twice the number of trees he had uprooted during the tobacco-curing season.

Over the last half decade, the Pakistan Tobacco Company had invested over Rs500 million in various projects of environment, health and safety, said a company official.

“We have a longstanding afforestation programme and have planted and distributed over 24 million trees since 1981. We now have our own nurseries and are planting 10,000 trees per day on an average,” he claimed.

When contacted, officials of the Lakson Tobacco Company said that they had no afforestation programme but were considering launching of such programme and distribution of free saplings in the tobacco growing area to reduce the impact of tree chopping on environment.

From growers to company officials and from environmentalists to the government officials, it was said that the government had done nothing to stop the ruthless cutting of trees.