Clean Green Pakistan Index to kick start competition among cities on November 15

ISLAMABAD: The much awaited Clean Green Pakistan Index to start healthy cleanliness competition among 19 cities across the country is going to be launched here on November 15. An official of the ministry of Climate Change (MoCC) told APP that the Prime Minister would launch the Clean Green Pakistan Index, which would gauge the performance of 19 cities of Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa based on five themes of public access to clean drinking water, safe sanitation, effective solid waste management and tree plantation.He added that there were 27 indicators under these themes: air quality of the particular district or city, soil quality or degradation level, solid waste management, safe sanitation of municipal waste, waste water treatment, access of clean drinking water to general public, measures to control open defecation and others.He said the data for the Clean Green Index would be collected by municipal and district departments which would be submitted through Municipal headquarters to Provincial headquarters and then to the MoCC.“Under the Clean Green Index, provincial development funding has been linked with their performance under the Index. The best performing cities would get national recognition and international level technical and capacity building trainings as well,” he mentioned. He informed that at present, there was no district level data available regarding cleanliness and human development. “Clean Green Index directly or indirectly has covered all 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) and it is also the part of Pakistan’s overall efforts in achieving SDGs,” he said.The district level data under the Clean Green Index would help set a clear direction for policy decisions and budgetary allocations as a huge data gap had restricted human development due to unreliable data, the official told APP.He said in the first phase the cities with better facilities were chose for the Index where in the second phase other districts and regions of the country would be incorporated in the project.He added that United Nations International Fund for Children (UNICEF) has provided technical guidelines to frame the Clean Green Index whereas its implementation was also devised under UNICEF’s relevant experiences. “Prime Minister Imran Khan is the driving force behind Clean Green Index as it is his mission to improve the country’s overall environment and cleanliness situation. for sustainable development,” he added.

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