LAHORE: Every district of Punjab is to have its own Parks and Horticulture Authority by January 2027, after Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz approved the province-wide rollout and cleared 2,820 technical posts to staff it.
The numbers now cover the whole map. Ten district authorities are already functioning, 11 more have been set up and the remaining 20 have been given the January deadline, which together account for all 41 districts of the province. A second phase will take the model down to every tehsil.
“I want to see every city, town and village adorned with trees and plants and fragrant with flowers,” the chief minister told a meeting she chaired in Lahore.
She ordered a month-by-month plan for seasonal flowering plants and told the authorities to put trees and flowers on every vacant patch of land. Plantation is to move in stages from tehsils and cities down to villages.
Each district authority will run an in-house nursery. It will raise saplings for plantation drives and seasonal flower beds and supply plants at low prices.
On staffing, every district will get a managing director, a director and technical staff. Ms Nawaz also asked for a resource plan from each district authority and directed that key performance indicators be drawn up for PHA officers.
The briefing disclosed a housekeeping measure as well. PHA employees who had been working at residences have been ordered back to their offices.
A common look is planned across the province. Staff and vehicles will carry uniform branding, planters and pots of one design will be placed in every city, and the design of a PHA food court was approved.
In Lahore, officials said all C-category parks have been restored. Bougainvillea has been planted along Khayaban-e-Jinnah, bamboo on Atta Bakhsh Road and amaltas on other roads, while three varieties of marigold are being grown across Punjab. The update follows a round of inspections in which the PHA chief toured the city’s parks.
Every authority has been handed targets for a better urban outlook, more attractive parks and restored green belts, with standard plantation matched to weather and season.
The idea is not new. The chief minister first announced a PHA for every district in August 2024, and Lahore’s own authority dates from 1998. What has changed is the count. Two years on, 21 of 41 districts have one, and the rest now have a date.
The timing is pointed. Lahore ranked sixth among the world’s most polluted cities this week with an air quality index of 201, and the smog season has only begun.
“Plantation has a positive effect not only on the environment but on human health,” Ms Nawaz said. She called planting a tree both an act of virtue and a defence against the effects of climate change.
The approach mirrors Suthra Punjab, the province-wide sanitation programme, and aims to do for green cover what that scheme set out to do for cleanliness.
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