Parliamentary hopefuls display environmental disdain

Candidates nail posters to trees on greenbelt in violation of by-laws

ISLAMABAD: It seems that for some people hoping to make their bow in the parliament have little regard for the environment or the by-laws of the city.

A number of candidates have started campaigning across the city, hammering in their promises at the tip of nails driven into trees on the greenbelts of the capital to hold up their posters.



This is new and rare trend could be seen in the way an independent candidate for the national assembly has littered trees along the eastern service road of Seventh Avenue in Sector G-6 ahead of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announcing the formal dates for the general elections.

Several posters announcing candidates from a dissident group of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), called Founder group, have gone up on the greenbelt. The posters announce the candidacy of Javed Intizar as a candidate for NA-53.



The panaflex posters have been fixed by driving large steel nails into the stems of trees.

Usually, the Directorate of Municipal Administration (DMA) faces the ire of general public as well as of the courts for placing of billboards in public parks, markets and other sensitive sites which civic body itself terms as illegal.

The residents of the area said that if the DMA fails to take action against such a blatant violation of the by-laws would either mean that the hoarding was not illegal or, that the civic body was permitting or perpetrating an illegal move to favour particular political groups. CDA Deputy Director Malik Saleem Akhtar told The Express Tribune that affixing posters onto trees was an illegal act.



He explained the lack of action against the posters as a matter which has yet to be brought into the knowledge of the authority. Now, he said, the DMA will take action against those responsible.

He assured that no one will be allowed to display such hoardings on trees in the greenbelts.

The Express Tribune made repeated attempts to contact Intizar but he could not be reached.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 21^st, 2018.