By Ali Imran
ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Climate Change, Malik Amin Aslam has said that in line with the Prime Minister Imran Khan’s of clean & green Pakistan, the government is taking all-out measures to overcome growing challenges of environmental degradation, particularly pollution and unmanaged solid waste littering in cities and towns across the country.
He said that with a view of economic role in days to come, the incumbent government was focusing on transforming
overall outlook of the cities. Malik Amin Aslam said, in November 2019, the prime minister launched an ambitious Clean Green Pakistan Index (CGPI) for tackling these urban environmental challenges, so as to provide the people with healthy livable condition. He said, CGPI encourage competition among cities on various indicators, including public access to drinking water, safe sanitation, effective solid waste management and tree plantation.
The initiative primarily weighs up clean and green characters of the cities on 35 indicators under these five pillars, the SAPM said adding this index will be used as a benchmark for making annual budgetary allocations to the
provinces from the national kitty. Malik Amin said that 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 selected cities were 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, he added. The Special Assistant to PM said that while initially the performance of the 20 cities from the two provinces competing has been now measured on the CGPI, most of them have performed well on all 35 indicators of CGPI under the six different themes.
