It is just ridiculous how local authorities continue to be carried away with their antics all in the name of beautification of our environment.

Lately more and more townships and city centres are seen with all kinds of neon and coloured lights as night falls. While sidewalks and lanes continue to suffer from poorly lit or faulty street lamps, the local authorities appear to be gung-ho about lighting up trees with all kinds of streamer and flood lights at night.

One wonders, do we not realise that trees too need to rest as much as we humans do. Even at an early age in school we learn that plants and trees make their food in sunlight; and as dusk creeps in, plant life produces carbon dioxide. Surely we do not want to also be known as 'not only a city that never sleeps, but also a country that never spares the poor trees either'!

Lighting up trees and plants may be nice and fun to look at, but any caring soul will know that the amount of heat generated by these floods lights can be damaging to the helpless plant-life. Why then are we continuing to condone such inconsiderate and ill-informed acts?

While on the one hand we seem to harp on the need to preserve our fragile eco-system and clamour to carry out spasmodic acts of so-called greening our environment campaigns, the local authorities on the other hand seem naive about the demerits of not letting trees to sleep.

While some buildings remain unlit even during major celebrations and while street lights and traffic lights can remain unattended for long periods of time, the authorities never fail to do all of the following:

  • Ever so eager to cut down our green canopies that give a refreshing supply of oxygen and shade from the broiling sun

  • Replacing trees and plants with brightly lit artificial trees

  • Suffocating trees that line the city roads with coloured flood lights and sometimes leaving it on late into the day

We need to be mindful of the fact that merely lighting up the trees at night will not transform our townships and cities in a fairyland. Tourists are not fooled when our drains cannot be rid of the overpowering stench that is all too common in this country. Littering remains an uncorrected culture. Serving clean food in hygienic environments is only observed when enforcement officers go on their rounds while rodents, stray cats and dogs are found scurrying happily everywhere.

It is about time that some leaders took stock of this absurd practice. It is time that environmentalists effectively re-educated these ill informed authorities.

Let us stop making a fool of ourselves especially to tourists. Let us do justice to nature too.