Yousufzai trashes criticism against Billion Tree Tsunami project

Information minister says opposition doing politics on baseless assumptions

PESHAWAR: The Opposition is making politics on Billion Tree Tsunami, said Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Shaukat Yousafzai.

He along with Minister for Forests Ishtiaq Urmar were addressing a press conference at Peshawar.

He termed the hue and cry of opposition over Billion Tree Tsunami as political point scoring. “Billion Tree Tsunami is a successful project of the PTI government and if the opposition could pinpoint any corruption in the project, we will accept the responsibility,” the information minister told the media.

Shaukat Yousafzai termed the allegations of opposition as baseless, concocted and said that the provincial government had constituted a parliamentary committee for visiting the sites of afforestation under the Billion Tree Tsunami at Bannu in which parliamentary leaders of all the parties have been included.

He said the provincial assembly had issued a schedule of the visit of the above committee, according to the schedule, the members of the parliamentary committee had to visit the sites at Bannu on April 25, but the opposition members submitted their resignation from all the committees of the assembly to the speaker on April 23.

Therefore, the scheduled visit was postponed. However, the opposition members along with some representatives of the media visited two sites Damai and Mama Khel at Bannu and alleged that no afforestation had been done at the sites.

The minister while mentioning facts and figures said that the sites visited by opposition members have already been relocated. He said the site of Damai had already been abandoned during phase-I. Likewise in Mama Khel -I , out of 41 hectares, 37 hectares area had been relocated to Mama Khel-2 which was not visited by opposition members while the remaining 8 hectares intentionally not visited by the opposition members. Minister Information said Damai site was relocated due to Water Logging while Mama Khel-I was relocated due to conflict between two tribes.

He said some disgruntled and penalised officials of the forest department moved the opposition members to visit the sites at Bannu. Defending the Billion Tree Tsunami project, the minister information said that the success rate of the said project was 85%. He said the project had got success in Bonn Challenge while ICUN and WWF have also declared it a success. He said in past, the rulers earned a lot of money due to windfall but the present government of PTI not only ensured the protection of the present forests but planted a large number of trees. He said if the opposition does not want to give credit to the government, it should not malafide this successful project for its political aims. He invited the members of the opposition as well as representatives of media to pinpoint any site of Billion Tree Tsunami, we will accompany them, if there had been no afforestation, we would accept its responsibility. He said resignation from committees of the provincial assembly was no solution of any problem, if they have any reservations, we would sit with them and we are ready to solve their all genuine reservations.