Report reveals irregularities worth billions of rupees in 'Billion Tree Tsunami' project

An audit report revealed a total of 13 irregularities worth billions of rupees in the "Billion Tree Tsunami" project in Punjab.

The Auditor General of Pakistan’s (AGP) report released on Wednesday showed a summary of scrutiny encircled a detailed review. 

According to the report, the first phase consisted of four years, while the audit was conducted for three years.

The program completed its three years without achieving the targets and benchmarks, it added.

The total riverine area is 13,997 acres, which consists of 26 forests spreading over a 4,255 square kilometre area in three districts, the other land with an area of 7,859 acres consisted of scrub forest.

The report said Rs369.77 million was lost to public resources due to failure in plant survival rate and the loss of 1,219 acres in flood resulted in a loss of Rs109.54 million.

Moreover, lack of consideration, delay in planning review, and wrong concepts, during the process of feasibility wasted Rs1.045 billion of national exchequer.

The audit report revealed illegal expenditure on forestry operations amounted to Rs2.818 billion and a loss of Rs178.62 million due to failure in complete plantation. 

Meanwhile, the role of project management remained unfunctional in fulfilling the condition of carbon credit.

The projects “Revival of Wildlife Resources" and "The Green Pakistan Program" were approved on 7-1-2019 and 4-7-2019, respectively. 

The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Enec) had approved the project with an estimated cost of 5.89 billion with an 84-month time, duration to complete.