HYDERABAD: It's safe to say that Hyderabad and its surrounding areas have not been active participants in the State government’s flagship programme ‘Telangana ku Haritha Haram’ this year. Both the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) and the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA), responsible for planting saplings in the city, are lagging behind in meeting their stipulated targets. Interestingly, lack of space in the city is the major reason behind this.
In Hyderabad, the overall target was to plant 10 crore saplings across a span of four years, from 2015-16 till 2018-19. However, the GHMC and the HMDA (combined) have only been able to plant a little over 6 crore saplings, despite the extension of the plantation drive to 2019-20.
The HMDA’s target, during the four phases of Haritha Haram, was to plant 7 crore plants in the peripheral regions of the city. It could only plant 3.89 crore saplings so far. “There is no space to plant more trees in the city,” a source from HMDA’s Urban Forestry Wing said. “We can only plant saplings if there is space. We have been urging institutions and government departments to plant trees on their office premises. But they do not seem very interested,”
Initially, the HMDA’s target this year was to plant 5.8 crore saplings, but they could only plant about 881 lakh saplings.
The GHMC, meanwhile, stands at 2.76 crores against its stipulated target of planting 3 crore saplings. “Survival rate is poorest in the GHMC areas,” an official from the Forest Department said. “The survival rate is less than 45 per cent. So, the corporation decided to plant nearly 2.5 crore saplings in the fifth phase of Haritha Haram alone, as more than half of the saplings planted in the last four phases failed to survive.” For this year, the GHMC planted around 717 lakh saplings against the set target of 2.5 crores, citing lack of space.