Clean, green cities to ‘boost economy’

SAPM said efforts under way to overcome growing environmental challenges

The PM’s aide on climate change on Sunday said the government was working on overcoming the growing environmental challenges in cities and that would increase their economic productivity in the coming days.

“All-out efforts are being made under the prime minister’s vision for a clean and green Pakistan to overcome the problems of pollution and unmanaged solid waste in cities and towns,” said Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Climate Change Malik Amin.

In a statement, the SAPM said the government was focusing on transforming the overall outlook of the cities.

The prime minister launched an ambitious Clean Green Pakistan Index (CGPI) last year in November for tackling urban environmental challenges so as to provide the people with healthy livable condition.

“The CGPI encourages competition among cities on various indicators including public access to drinking water, safe sanitation, effective solid waste management and tree plantation,” Amin said.

The initiative primarily focuses on clean and green characters of the cities on 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.

“In the initial phase of the CGPI, 20 cities of Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provinces including Attock, Lahore, Gujranwala, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Sahiwal, Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan, Okara and Bahawalpur, were selected to compete on certain issues of public interest,” the SAPM explained.

The selected cities are being judged on addressing issues such as safe drinking water, solid waste management, liquid waste management, city beautification, cleanliness of streets, the usability of parks, tree plantation, total sanitation/hygiene and community participation.

The PM’s aide said most of the cities had performed well on all 35 indicators of CGPI under the six different themes.

Attock city attained the highest score of 76.53 points among all 13 cities of Punjab province followed by Bahawalpur (74.80), Lahore (74.30), Gujrat (70.46), Rawalpindi 69.94), Sahiwal (65.88), Gujranwala (64.39), Faisalabad (62.97), Multan (60.63), Sialkot 56.27), Sargodha (56.10), DG Khan (53.45) and Murree (37.29). In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Bannu bagged the highest score of (57.50) on CGPI, followed by Kohat (52.97), Abbottabad (52.72), Peshawar (45.39), Mardan (34.17), Swat (30.97) and DI Khan (21.19).

Amin said in recognition of the performance of the 20 cities on 35 indicators of CGPI, the deputy commissioners there were awarded by Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Highlighting the factors and indicators behind the performance, the SAPM said 120,000 champions registered with the PM's Clean Green Pakistan Programme played a vital role in monitoring the role of the city administrations, particularly municipalities.

“They also played their role in helping these cities to improve their performance of managing cities in the best environmental-friendly way.” APP