By Mansoor Bakhtiar
The Prime Minister Imran Khan’s flagship Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Plantation (TBTTP) initiative is not only helping the country to counter the environmental crisis and help promote unique environment-friendly entrepreneurship for unemployed women and youth of the rural areas, but has also inspired many others across the country to plan trees and make Pakistan eco-friendly country.
Amir Naushad Khan from Lower Dir-KP is one of those social workers who got inspired by the idea and initiative of Imran Khan of plantations across the country.
According to Amir Naushad Khan, until now he has planted thousands of saplings across his district. It must be noted that the Billion Tree Tsunami Programme is the country’s largest-ever tree plantation initiative that has generated some 85,000 green jobs during the pressing times in pandemic that helped provide livelihoods to Covid-idled youth, including women.
While talking to Voice of KP, Amir Naushad said that the plantation of saplings was an easy task, but taking care of it has always been a tough job saving it against all odds from weather harshness to the human activities.
About the protection of trees he said, “In my village there was a forest having over six million trees occupied by few families who wanted to build homes on the forest land by cutting all the trees standing there.” Amir recalled that he along with his elders of the village bought land from all the families in order to stop tree cutting.
“I myself took the responsibility of taking care of the six million trees as I did not want to lose this huge forest playing a very important role in making my village eco-friendly”, said Amir.
He said that besides plantations in his own district, he has planted thousands of trees in the other districts as well and majority of his planted plants are now growing and taking the shape of full trees.
According to Amir Naushad, he has planted saplings in many government buildings including Schools and hospitals across Khyber Pukhtunkhwa.
About his inspiration, he said that Prime Minister Imran Khan was his inspiration for this initiative as he was the first leader of the country to take lead in making Pakistan eco-friendly.
About expenditure for plantation, Amir Naushad said, “No one is paying me for buying saplings. I am a settled businessman and I dedicated amount of my profit for buying and planting saplings.”
In his message, Amir Naushad said that plantation is a very easy task and everyone in the society should at least plant one tree in his life and help eco-friendly environment.
It is important to mention here that Pakistan is among the few countries in the list badly affected by the global warming and climate change.
According to experts, the reason behind Pakistan’s worst condition of climate change is deforestation and ignorance of people and successive governments towards safeguarding forests. Plantation at government and public level can help fight deforestation.
