NEW DELHI: The New Delhi MP Meenakshi Lekhi on Saturday announced that during the current monsoon season the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has a target for planting 2500 fruit bearing trees like mango, guava, Chiccu, bel patra, orange, jammun and pear in its gardens, along circular roads and residential colonies. Besides, 1700 trees, 30,000 shrubs and 50,000 ground covers will be developed during this monsoon season, she added.
Expressing her satisfaction over the 80 percent surviving rate of the saplings during the previous years, she exhorted the NDMC employees to maintain this rate and look after and safeguard the saplings with desired care and called upon the residents of New Delhi area to come forward to plant more saplings not only in their surrounding areas but wherever the space is available saplings be planted in maximum number.
"Wherever we plant, we should plant five trees and the cluster of five trees and we may call it panchvati. And the idea behind this panchvati is to fight malnutrition, the people who are living in the slum areas are positively malnutrition and malnourishment is not among the people, who have lack of resources. But it is due to wrong diet, bad habit and bad lifestyle," said Lekhi.
Delhi is one of the greener areas in comparison to other metropolitan cities and we should further enhance its green cover in order to beat the malnutrition by planting indigenous trees saplings like mango, guava, pomegranate, avla, bail-patr, which may serve as preventive of health care, she added.
Chairman-NDMC Naresh Kumar informed that with the sustained efforts made by the team NDMC, the green cover of New Delhi area had been enhanced from 46 to 50 percent during the last four years and added that for further enhancement of this green cover, the NDMC has decided to develop a hi-tech nursery at Yamuna Catchment area in South Delhi just opposite the Sarai Kala Khan. And 25 acres of land had been taken from the DDA for the purpose. The tender process has been initiated for finalizing the bidder to kick off the project, he said.
He added that Green Water Harvesting System is to be developed at different locations of local areas in New Delhi besides, the government premises. He also informed that as many as 60 Rain Water Harvesting Chambers would be developed in NDMC area and 237 have already been commissioned.
The capacity of each rainwater harvesting chamber is 20 cubic meter. The Rain Water Harvesting Chambers will help to conserve the rain water and also to arrest the depleting of ground water level.