Attock tops clean green index

Attock has topped a government index for tackling urban environmental challenges amongst a total of 20 cities across two provinces.

This was disclosed by Prime Minister’s Special Assistant on Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam on Tuesday while unveiling the standings in the Clean Green Pakistan Index (CGPI).

Aslam said that the country in general and its urban centres, in particular, are facing growing challenges of environmental degradation, particularly pollution, and unmanaged solid waste littering in cities and towns of the country.

To tackle these, Aslam said that last year Prime Minister Imran Khan had launched the CGPI to encourage competition amongst cities on various indicators, including public access to safe drinking water, safe sanitation, effective solid waste management and tree plantation among 35 indicators under these five pillars. This index will be used as a benchmark for making annual budgetary allocations to the provinces from the national kitty.

Talking to the media on Tuesday, he highlighted that the incumbent government was focusing on transforming the overall outlook of the cities, which will play key economic roles in the coming days.

“Marked by reckless discarding of solid waste for want of proper waste dispose-off facilities, our cities have become hugely polluted and are fast-becoming unlivable,” Aslam said, adding that during the initial phase, 20 cities of Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) provinces were selected to compete on certain issues of public interest.

On the performance of these cities, he said that most of them have performed well on all 35 indicators.

Giving the scores achieved by the cities, Aslam said that Attock city attained the highest score of 76.53 points among the 13 cities of Punjab included in the index. Attock district is also Aslam’s home district.

It was followed by Bahawalpur with a score of 74.8, Lahore with 74.3, Gujrat with 70.46, Rawalpindi with 69.94, Sahiwal at 65.88, Gujranwala with 64.39, Faisalabad with 62.97, Multan with 60.63, Sialkot with 56.27, Sargodha with 56.1, Dera Ghazi Khan with 53.45 and Murree with 37.29.

In K-P, Bannu bagged the highest score of 57.5, followed by Kohat with 52.97, Abbottabad with 52.72, Peshawar with 45.39, Mardan with 34.17, Swat with 30.97 and Dera Ismail Khan had the lowest score of all cities with 21.19.

The climate change aide said that the deputy commissioners of the districts, where the cities are located, will be awarded by the Prime Minister Imran Khan for showing prominent progress towards making their cities clean and green.

On how the ministry managed to monitor the progress made by the cities, Aslam said that some 120,000 ‘champions’ had registered with the PM’s Clean Green Pakistan Programme. They also played their role in helping these cities improve their performance of managing cities in the most environmental-friendly way, he added.

The PM’s special assistant also highlighted that since the launching CGPI last November, some 1.2 million trees had been planted in two cities, where 156,724 public hygiene and 10,787 public awareness campaigns were conducted.

He vowed to expand the CGPI to other cities, particularly in other provinces such as Balochistan, Sindh, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, where environmental degradation, particularly air pollution and the absence of solid waste management facilities, are posing grave risks to the public health and overall environment.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 21^st, 2020.