HYDERABAD: With Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao being keen on having greenery all along the Outer Ring Road (ORR) at the earliest, the chief minister’s office and the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) have initiated a series of measures for greening ORR stretches on priority.
Priyanka Varghese, officer on special duty in CMO’s office, held a series of meetings with HMDA authorities a few days ago and chalked out an action plan for tree plantation along the main carriageway, service roads, railway corridor, central medians and interchanges by this month-end. HMDA metropolitan commissioner T Chiranjeevulu told Express that 25 lakh saplings would be planted at a cost of around `10 crore. Pitting, fixing of tree guards, labour, digging of borewells, construction of water sumps and laying of pipelines will cost another `10 crore. The exercise will take a month or two for completion.
The Chief Minister is keenly monitoring the implementation of Haritha Haaram and it has become prerogative for HMDA to develop greenery on ORR on priority. Rao is keen to showcase ORR as one of the best projects and wants to attract more and more investments to the state.
In this connection, as many 10 to 20 HMDA officials have been drafted for supervision and execution of greenery development indicating the chainage from kilometre to kilometre. Each officer has been allotted a chainage of 6 to 10 km stretch.
The in-charge officers should inspect the areas allotted to them and assess the requirement of plants and material etc. As the ORR has a long stretch of 158 km and the experienced manpower availability is not adequate, HMDA decided to utilise the services of retired forest and horticulture officers for planting and related works. It has invited applications from them.
HMDA officials said that on central medians, shrubs like pagoda, nerium, pedalantus, Inermi, Acalypha, durantha and bougainvillea will be planted. On MCW shoulders plant species like spathodia, bahunia, rela, argentia, tabubia and bigonia will be planted.
At 14 interchanges plants like neem, ravi, gulmohar, chinabadam, peltoform and sapthodia will be planted and on service roads ravi, silver oak, chinabadam, tacoma, gulmohar and species will be planted.