De-choke trees by May 23 or face action, Bangar’s ultimatum to officials
   Date :27-Apr-2019
By Vikas Vaidya

 
Taking serious cognizance of choking of trees due to road concretisation work, Commissioner of Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) Abhijit Bangar asked all the officials of all the zones to de-choke the trees in their areas by May 23 or face action. ‘The Hitavada’ has been consistently publishing the reports and photos about the trees being choked due to the road concretisaion work.
 
The thoughtful action of Nagpur Municipal Commissioner Abhijit Bangar created a ray of hope in the minds of Nagpurians whose hearts are pained by the choking of trees taken place during the concretisation of roads. Bangar has conducted a meeting of all the Assistant Commissioners along with Executive Engineers and asked them to de-choke the trees by May 23. “I convened a meeting clearly told them that trees choked due to concretisation. They would submit the report with all the details like how many trees in their areas were choked and how many of those are de-choked. I got pained when I personally visited the sites where I saw trees were getting suffocated,” said Bangar.
No care was taken of the roadside trees while constructing the roads. Amol Chorpagar, Garden Superintendent of Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) said, “We had sent letters to the company, road contractors, Public Works Department (PWD) before the road concretisation works but nobody took note of it.”
 
The concretisation of roads did not take place during the tenure of Bangar who was critical of the argument by Garden Superintendent of sending letters to the people asking them to take care of trees. “Such things can not be done by just sending letters. We have to pursue the matter, pay a visit to the places and see how the work was going on,” said Bangar.
 
NMC is doing this work of dechoking in coordination with PWD. Admitting the fault Ulhas Debadwar, Chief Engineer of PWD assured that the de-choking of trees would be done in the given time-frame.
Kaustav Chatterjee of Green Vigil Foundation alleged the contractors for not leaving proper space around the trees during the concretisation work. “In normal case at least a space of a one and a half feet should be left around the average grown trees. I am surprised that these contractors were not aware of these things. It was the work of Garden people to remind them. Though NMC now has taken a step to dechoke, it should not have needed to be done had the care been taken earlier,” commented Chatterjee.
 
Unfortunately, not a single penny was budgeted for the garden department. It was done by Bangar in December and he is also the first one to issue the guidelines for chopping the trees. Now before construction of any road, the contractor has to seek permission from NMC to cut the trees posting valid reason.
 
One former office attached to Garden department complained that there used to be two tree officers and the posts were there. But NMC did not take care to fill the vacant posts and all the responsibility was shouldered by the Garden Superintendent.
 
Mahesh Morone, Assistant Commissioner of Dharampeth Zone has started working on dechoking the trees. He was optimistic that the work would be completed even before the first week of May in his zone.