Saving the environment: KMC ‘swears’ no trees will be cut down

Municipality’s lawyer renders undertaking before high court.

KARACHI: The Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) will not chop down or remove any more trees in the city, except necessary trims.

The metropolitan corporation’s lawyer, S Sultan Ahmed, rendered this undertaking before the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Monday. The court was hearing a petition that a large number of trees are being chopped down to pave way for lucrative outdoor advertisements.

The petitioner, Shakeel Ahmed, had cited the prime minister’s secretariat, the defence secretary, the provincial local bodies’ secretary, the city administrator and the Karachi cantonment board’s chief executive officer as respondents.

He claimed that the cantonment board had chopped down a large number of trees along Sharae Faisal, particularly from the Christian cemetery to Regent Plaza, to mint money by installing billboards of the advertising agencies.

“The modus operandi of the respondents is that they use acid, which dries up the trees, which are later cut down,” the petitioner claimed. In this way, various advertisement agencies were being provided space to erect billboards, he added.



He pleaded the court restrain the cantonment board and the KMC from chopping down healthy green trees and order action against those responsible. He suggested imposing fines to discourage this trend.

When the case was taken up, KMC’s lawyer assured that no more trees would be cut down. Where necessary, the trees will only be trimmed, Ahmed said. In view of this assurance, the petitioner did not press his plea, which was disposed of by the bench headed by Justice Maqbool Baqar.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 20^th, 2013.