NIZAMABAD:Officials, who left saplings planted on roadsides as part of the Haritha Haram plantation drive unguarded, suddenly woke up to provide tree guards in Kamareddy revenue division. Also, officials took up road repair works within no time.
All this, thanks to Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s proposed visit to the district on Sunday to Yerrapahad village in Tadwai mandal to console Yellareddy MLA E Ravindar Reddy, who lost his mother recently. Just days before the district administration received communication that Rao would visit Yerrapahad village by road from Hyderabad. However, the officials’ efforts went unnoticed by the CM as he took a chopper instead.
District officials swung into action. They assumed that Rao might travel by road and would see that planted saplings have not been provided proper protection and pull them up. The responsibility of protecting trees planted on the roadside was given to Panchayatraj and Roads and Buildings departments.
The officials hurriedly made arrangements to provide tree guards for the saplings planted across the nearly 35 km stretch from Baswapur to Yerrapahad.
Around 500 saplings were planted on both sides of this road. In Kamareddy town and Yerrapahad village, officials arranged iron tree guards and at other places, the saplings were given protection with tree branches and bushes.
“We have done all this at night using our vehicle lights,” Kamareddy Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) M Joji told Express. The R&B department took up several road maintenance works in Kamareddy town. Panchayat Raj department also started works near Yerrapahad. Works to lay roads from R&B guest house (Mothe) to Yerrapahad was sanctioned long ago for `60 Lakh. “Generally, road works are not taken up during monsoon, but we forced the contractor to start work,” Superintending Engineer Satyamurthy said.