Beat the heat with greenery

Vijayawada: Indiscriminate felling of trees by various departments for different reasons is leading to deficiency in the city environment. Widespread cutting of age-old trees is not compensated with developing green belts in and around the city. Vehicular pollution is adding to the problem as carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide replacing oxygen.

The trees, which can absorb these poisonous gases and release fresh oxygen in the environment, were decreasing at an alarming rate. Hills in the city, which contribute for rise in temperature, due to their barren nature, are one of the biggest challenges. Greenery can be developed on hills by spilling seeds through choppers and planes which would help in making the hills green before the onset of monsoon.

“It was during the end of eighties that Jandhyala Sankar, the then mayor, attempted successfully to spray seeds on hills by pressing flights into service. It gave good results. However, the effort was not continued after that, recalled K Subba Raju, a former MLA from Vijayawada West constituency.

He told The Hans India that almost all labourers living on hills have little time to care for saplings. They go to work early in the morning and return during the night. The Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) should assign the task to water the plants on hills to its staff by providing water supply through boosters.

Similarly, the VMC on its own should plant saplings in vacant plots and collect the expenditure when the plot owner approaches the authorities for permission for the construction, Raju suggested.Mohammed Vaseem, a science student, says the barren lands on hills are one of the reasons for rise in temperature in the city. “Once we plant saplings, they become trees and absorb water and releases moisture when temperatures rise.

Filling every bit of vacant space on hills with saplings would bring cool breeze to the city rather than sultry weather with which everyone is suffering during summer,” he added.As part of city beautification, the authorities have felled many trees in the city. Even for Vijayawada-Machilipatnam highway construction thousands of old trees on two sides of the road were being cut down by the authorities.

On the other hand, the Transco was chopping branches of trees as well as felling some trees to clear electricity lines. This is a continuous process in everyday’s life. Sapling plantation will compensate the loss of greenery. Unless the government takes up the plantation on a massive manner there is no solution to keep the city cool.

Noor Shaik