Karachi : President, Dr Arif Alvi, has urged the concerned philanthropists and business community to generously donate to help out the people from the deprived communities whose survival have become highly difficult due to record inflation and devastating floods in the country.
President expressed these remarks as he met a delegation of the National Forum for Environment and Health (NFEH) led by its President, Naeem Qureshi, here at Governor House.
The President appreciated the drive of the NFEH for the past many years to provide a common platform to the concerned leading philanthropists, donors, non-governmental organisations, and charities to work collectively for noble social causes in the country.
He said that such noble charitable efforts had gained much significance in the backdrop of unprecedented hikes in the prices of essential products and catastrophic floods in the country last year.
The President said that charities and business entities under their drives under the concept of corporate social responsibility should make sure that people in underprivileged areas should get access to quality education and health facilities in addition to fulfillment of their basic needs.
He also appreciated the continuous campaign of the NFEH to do massive tree plantations in major urban centres and conduct awareness campaigns to conserve energy.
Dr Alvi recalled that during
his stint as a member of the National Assembly, he had conducted a campaign to plant 200,000 trees in his constituency and distributed 100,000 pencils among school students containing seeds to motivate children to practically take part in the plantation campaigns.He said the tree plantation drives in urban areas would go a long way in empowering Pakistan to tackle the adverse impacts of the phenomenon of climate change.
The President urged the state and government institutions to fully participate in the energy conservation drive by curtailing electricity consumption in offices.
He said the use of solar energy would also go a long way to improve the environment and reduce the consumption of fossil fuels for electricity production in the country.
He said that for the same cause, the project of solarization had been carried out at the President’s House.
NFEH President while briefing President about the annual activities of his NGO informed him that 15th International CSR Summit-2023 was held in Islamabad on February 21 where over 70 companies were recognised for their community uplift activities in last one year.
He said the annual CSR Summit had been held for the past 15 years to appreciate the show of excellence by concerned philanthropists and corporate sector in doing noble charitable and philanthropic work in the country.
The meeting was attended by Ruqiya Naeem, Engineer Nadeem Ashraf, Mustafa Tahir of NFEH, Imran Taj of the Fire Protection Association of Pakistan, and Muhammad Ghazal of Saylani International Welfare Trust.
