Deliberate or accidental forests’ fires

Amazingly in less than two weeks’ time 112 incidents of mountains’ forest fires have occurred in which vast chunks of plantations under the billion tree plantation have been destroyed. In Swat four more mountain forests have caught fire the other day. In earlier 111 incidents of fires in different forests on the mountains of Khyber Pukhtunkhwa 210,100 trees mostly of pines have been destroyed. This is not only a significant damage caused to the Billion Tree Plantation Project, which was launched in 2014 in response to fight headlong the challenges of climate change, but will also disturb the  efforts of restoring the ecological balance. As an eyewash exercise, the provincial government has decided to set up a committee to probe the matter. But in the past the reports of such committees have never been made public and responsibility has not been fixed on the ones who may have been responsible for inflicting damage of natural resources.

The people of Sawat had given a sit-in front of the office of District Forest Office last year on account of merciless and unauthorized cutting of trees in forests. The Chief Minister Mahmood Khan had then set up an inquiry a committee to probe the matter and fix the responsibility on those who may be hand-in-glove with the timber mafia but it later turned out a hush up exercise as nothing concrete came to lime light.

Despite the tall claims of the provincial government, the unbridled wood cutting in forest is going on with the connivance of forest department officials and local political elite. The issue was agitated by the record number of tourists on social media after their visit to the tourist spots in Khyber Puktunkhwa last month. Since then, the incidents of forest fires are on the rise which engulfs the plantations that have been made under the billion tree plantation programme over the past five years. The Committee-Committee farce cannot dig out the truth about this matter. The political dimension of these incidents cannot be ignored. Constitution of enquiry commission on the unprecedented number of forest fires will be more appropriate.

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