New Town to plant 10K trees & saplings to increase green cover

Kolkata: To increase green cover the Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation (Hidco) started its plantation drive at a function held in New Town on Saturday.

Debashis Sen, chairman of Hidco along with senior officials and some residents of New Town were present at the function.

Hidco will plant around 10,000 trees and saplings in July. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had planted trees at Harish Park on the World Environment Day on June 5 and urged att the civic authorities and autonomous bodies to take up the plantation programme seriously as thousands of trees got uprooted by the super cyclone Amphan. In Kolkata 12,500 trees got uprooted.

Out of 26,000 trees in New Town, over 4,000 trees had been damaged by Amphan. Of these 3,500 trees have been transplanted. In most of the trees that have been transplanted new leaves have come. The tall trees have been supplies by the nurseries

managed by the state Forest department.

Hidco decided to plant trees on the plots that have not been utilized so far after taking permission from the allotters. On Saturday 100 trees were planted on these plots and more will be planted in course of time.

As the plots were lying unused people used to throw garbage and on many of them Parthenium grew and are potential breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

The plots will be cleaned to make room for plantation.