Save the Trees!!
These days there’s- finally!- a rumpus being created by people with brains about the 10,000 trees slated for choppage along the canal to broaded the road. We all know that 10,000 trees is far in excess of the actual number that should be cut, and that the g0overnment’s is absolutely crap at protecting the environment, let alone gap replanting the trees they will destroy. 800 extra trees were cut for the Thokar and Jinnah Hospital underpasses; this time we have to do something to protect our City of Gardens!
There’s a meeting tomorrow at Nairang Gallaries (which is opposite Kinnaird College) at 5:30 on Tuesday, 27 June. The ‘Darakht Bachao, Lahore Bachao’ people really need volunteers, so if you can go, please please do so. There is also a Peoples Conference at Ali Complex on Friday, the details of which one will probably be told of at the Tuesday meeting. You can also call this number and leave your name and e-mail address if you’d like to be informed of further meetings :042-6303037. Let’s really pull together, people, and save our little bit of the world!
This is so crazy! what about the pollution that’s caused due to the traffic congestion, wastage of fuel and time. All those momy dady people who don’t even live in Pakistan and when they do come they have drivers to drive for them are complaining for no valid reason. If this pathetic government decided to do so good in the their last days please let them do!
“As long as the people of your culture are convinced that the world belongs to them and that their divinely-appointed destiny is to conquer and rule it, then they are of course going to go on acting the way they’ve been acting for the past ten thousand years. They’re going to go on treating the world as if it were a piece of human property and they’re going to go on conquering it as if it were an adversary. You can’t change these things with laws. You must change people’s minds. And you can’t just root out a harmful complex of ides and leave a void behind: you have to give people something that is as meaningful as what they’ve lost-something that makes better sense then the old horror of Man supreme, wiping out everything on this planet that doesn’t server his needs directly or indirectly.” [Ishmael by Daniel Quinn – pg. 249]
perhaps govt officials should be forced to read this book :). dont forget to update us with the outcome
As a person who drives on the canal bank road every day to and from work, I feel that there is no need to widen the road.
The government can widen the road by 10 lanes even but the same congestion problems will remain. What needs to be done urgently is to properly manage the traffic flow and ruthlessly enforce all traffic rules/laws. This must include:
1. Proper enforcement of driving lane principle: Higher speed vehicles keep in the right lane; slower speed vehicles keep in the left lane.
2. Ban (slow-moving) animal-drawn vehicles and tractors/trolleys from using the road during peak traffic hours.
3. Provide a separate bay at bus stops, so that buses can stop to pick/drop passengers without blocking any traffic lane.
4. Remove all encroachments (like fruit sellers, chhalli wala, etc.) from the road. Not only are these safetly hazards, they cause unnecessary bottlenecks.
5. Conduct any repair/maintenance/development work affecting access to the road during off-peak hours e.g. 2:00AM
In our endeavors to modernize our metropolis we do not need to make the worst of the mistakes which some Western cities made and are now regretting. We need to invest in solutions that are sensitive to the needs of our people and environment. Our objective should be “Sustainable Development”.
Amen.
If the middle class members of the Lahore Bachao Committee could get off their cell phones, turn their A/Cs off and roll their automatic windows down, they will see that it’s the marginalised and poor people who have to use the canal who actually suffer.
anyone can hug a tree…but who will judge what’s more important…a life or a leaf?
In this classic case of environmentalism gone mad, maybe someone will stand up and bring order to the galaxy.