Plant trees and beautify plots in front of your establishments: HIDCO

With an aim to make New Town a greener township, Housing and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO) has urged residents' cooperatives and companies to plant trees and beautify the land in front of their establishments.

A meeting to discuss the matter was held on Thursday where members of different housing cooperatives and companies that took part accepted the proposal. HIDCO will put up boards containing the names of housing cooperatives or companies that will be carrying out beautification works. However, the land will continue to remain under HIDCO.

It has often been found that the patches of green between the property line and footpath and flank road become "no body's property" and are not looked after properly. Soon, they turn into areas where people offload garbage. To address this, a unique plan has been chalked out.

The housing cooperatives will be allowed to plant shrubs and do landscaping but no tall trees will be allowed to be planted. It may be mentioned that the unplanned planting of tall trees on the pavement by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) under the Left Front controlled board between 1985 and 2000 has become a major problem for the present board. Because of the utility services, the roots cannot go further down so cannot hold the tree firmly. When there is a storm, such trees are the first ones to be affected and are uprooted easily.

HIDCO has earmarked areas where tall trees will be planted. It has set up nurseries to grow tall trees. In 2015, during the Banmahotsav, over 40,000 saplings were planted by the state Urban Development minister Firhad Hakim in New Town.

New Town is slowly coming up as a green city and measures have already been taken to increase its green cover. The roadside trees are being hydrated with recycled water. The banks along Bagjola canal have been upgraded and beautified. A floating jetty will be set up and there are plans to open floating markets.

There are proposals to replace the existing street lights with LEDs and the Eco Park has become a model of how greenery should be preserved in the country.

Debashis Sen, chairman of HIDCO, who presided over Thursday's meeting along with those who had attended, agreed to beautify the land in front of their properties. It may be mentioned that some establishments have already beautified the areas in front of their properties.