Workers Laid Off Because Of Coronavirus, Being Employed To Plant 10 Billion Trees In Pakistan

When countries around the globe placed nationwide lockdowns to prevent the novel pandemic coronavirus from spreading any further, low-income countries with huge populations struggled to face the economic backlash of the situation. All of us are well-aware of the migrant/daily-wage workers' situation in our country and the same happened to our neighbour, Pakistan.

Several workers in Pakistan lost their jobs and ended up being homeless or simply ran out of resources to feed themselves. However, the government rightly took this matter into its own hands and are hiring unemployed day labourers to plant trees across the country, to curb the other global crisis that is on its way - climate change.

According to Reuters, these workers are given new jobs as 'jungle workers' and will plant saplings as part of the country's 10 Billion Tree Tsunami programme. This green initiative is the government's way of avoiding one crisis by doing something about it during the present one.

"Due to coronavirus, all the cities have shut down and there is no work. Most of us daily wagers couldn't earn a living," Rahman, a resident of Rawalpindi district in Punjab province, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Thomson Reuters Foundation News

Rahman is earning Rs 500 per day by planting trees which is almost half of what he usually earns, but it is enough for him to survive for now.

"All of us now have a way of earning daily wages again to feed our families," he said.

The five-year tree-planting programme was launched in 2018 by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and it aims to counter rising temperatures, flooding, droughts and other extreme weather changes in the country.

According to the Global Climate Risk Index 2020 which was issued by think tank, Germanwatch, Pakistan ranks fifth on a list of countries which are most affected by planetary heating over the last two decades. This is despite of the fact that South Asian countries only contribute a fraction of global greenhouse gases.

David Suzuki

The 10 Billion Tree campaign was initially halted when the novel pandemic attacked the nation as social-distancing norms were set out to be practiced. However, PM Imran Khan exempted the forestry agency to restart the campaign which led to creating more than 63,600 jobs.

So, while the rest of the population is still in lockdown, local police and district authorities have been directed to allow trucks carrying trees to travel. People who are a part of the campaign are also allowed to leave their homes and work with the project. Abdul Muqeet Khan, chief conservator of forests for Rawalpindi district, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the planting project is in "full swing".

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Based off a recent assessment by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, the pandemic lockdown can cause at least 19 million people to lose their jobs.