HYDERABAD, Nov 20: Sindh minister for agriculture, food, forests and wildlife, Hassan Ali Chanhio has directed the officials of the forest department not to allow anyone to occupy forest land and get the illegally occupied land vacated without delay irrespective of the social status of the encroachers.
He was presiding over a joint meeting of the officials of the forest and wildlife departments at Miani Forest near here on Monday.
He directed the officials to launch an organised campaign of tree plantation to eliminate environmental pollution and to boost national economy. He added proper care should be taken to preserve new plantations.
The minister was informed more than 95 per cent of occupied forest land had been reclaimed from encroachers and the remaining five per cent encroachers will be ejected soon.
The meeting was informed 25,205 acres of forest land had been forcibly occupied by encroachers but due to the efforts of the forest department and army personnel, illegal occupants had been thrown out from 24,444 acres of land.
The provincial secretary of forests, livestock and environment, Shamsul Haq Memon told the meeting forests were spread over 2.782 million acres out of which 0.799 million acres were covered by trees whereas 1.983 million acres comprised mangroves and protective range land.
He said the forest department was concentrating on planting coconut trees and added 150,000 coconut seeds and saplings had been provided to growers.
The chief conservator forest Ghulam Mustafa Shaikh said during monsoon plantation campaign 2001, a target of seven million saplings was given out of which 5.7 million saplings had been planted.
Giving the break-up, he said 2.8 million sapling were planted outside forest area while 2.9 million were planted on forest land.
He said to control pollution the environment department was giving priority to plantation of trees on roads, parks, offices, educational institutions and cantonment areas.
Those who attended the meeting included conservator wildlife Muneer Ahmed Awan, conservator forest Hyderabad Umer Memon and others.
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