Sher Bahadar Mudhwal
EVERY town has its own quiet miracle workers, the ones who don’t trend on social media, don’t give rousing speeches from podiums and certainly don’t cut ribbons with ceremonial scissors.
In Khushab and Joharabad, they happen to wear the green of the Forest Department and carry watering cans instead of microphones. Their collaboration with the District Administration is not the sort of thing that makes national headlines, but maybe it should. Because in an age when climate change and rising temperatures have become an almost daily lament, here is a group quietly making the kind of difference you can literally breathe in.
Drive down the Sargodha–Mianwali Road between Khushab and Joharabad, you’ll see the evidence: rows of plants, planted like a living corridor, offering charm to travellers and filtering the air for everyone else. It’s the sort of beauty that doesn’t need a plaque or a politician’s face printed on a banner. It’s just there—calm, green and doing its job. But what most passersby don’t see is the persistence that keeps this greenery alive. That persistence is not just institutional—it’s personal. At the helm of district coordination, Deputy Commissioner Farwa Aamer has played a pivotal role in bridging administration with grassroots implementation. Her proactive approach and unwavering support for sustainable urban beautification have empowered the Forest Department to function with clarity, consistency and purpose.
The staff of the Forest Department has turned “earthing” into an art form—carefully arranging soil around each plant to strengthen its roots. They water them daily, check them like a nurse checks a patient’s vitals and if a plant shows signs of fading, they act as if it’s a code-blue emergency. You could call it professional duty, but it feels more like devotion.
At the centre of this operation is DFO Imtiaz Hussain Siddiqui, who works on the unfashionable premise that a city’s beauty is not a luxury but an essential ingredient in its quality of life. He’s flanked by SDO Umar Farooq, whose knack for organization and team motivation could probably turn around any stalled public project. And then there’s Muhammad Taj & Suleman Awan, who seems to love trees the way some people love their own pets—attentively, personally and with the quiet satisfaction of seeing them thrive.
What’s striking is that this is not being sold as some grand campaign with branded caps and hashtags. It’s a steady, almost humble assertion that Khushab and Joharabad deserve better air, cooler summers and streets lined with something more enduring than concrete. It’s also a quiet nudge to the residents: you can join in. After all, a tree is not just an oxygen factory—it’s a deposit into the account of future generations.
Of course, planting is the easy bit. Every romantic poet and every over-eager politician has at some point put a sapling into the ground for the cameras. But keeping it alive through punishing summers, erratic rainfall and the occasional goat with no respect for civic order—that’s the grind. In Khushab, that grind is being handled with such grace that the project is already a model for other districts in Punjab. Anyone travelling that road is a witness to a small but profound transformation.
—The writer is contributing columnist, based in Islamabad.
