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Haritha Haram saplings cry for protection
In order to improve the forest cover and drive away the recurring drought, the Government of Telangana has embarked on a huge exercise to plant crores of saplings banking on support from the bureaucracy.
​Nalgonda/ Karimnagar: In order to improve the forest cover and drive away the recurring drought, the Government of Telangana has embarked on a huge exercise to plant crores of saplings banking on support from the bureaucracy.
But the officials are reportedly treating it as a mere annual ritual than a serious exercise and leaving the plants in the lurch instead of carefully nursing them. To quote an example, on July 8 Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao launched the Haritha Haram phase-II at Gundrampalli in Nalgonda district, where the forest cover is a meagre 5.8 per cent as against the stipulated 33 per cent.
The decrease in forest cover led to drought and mercury shooting up in the district. Later, he launched a programme to plant 1.25-lakh saplings in the mandals and the villages that line up Hyderabad-Vijayawada national highway-65 up to a distance of 165 km mobilising over one lakh villagers. He supervised the whole exercise from helicopter.
According to The Hans India, the plants withered away for want of follow up action by the officials. The saplings in the first of the three rows survived here and there because of watering the plants intermittently.
The next two rows completely withered away and some of the plants were devoured by goats and cattle. Lack of coordination among the officials has been defeating the purpose of the plantation drive in spite of periodic reviews by the government. The need of the hour is to replace the dried away plants with new ones and protect the survived plants with tree guards and nurse them by regularly watering them.
In Karimnagar, the district officials have failed to nurse saplings planted by none other than Finance Minister Etala Rajender on July 8 as part of Harita Haram Phase-II. On July 8, accompanied by MP Vinod, MLA Gangula Pratapa Reddy and others the ministers proceeded in a rally to the Circus Grounds where he planted the saplings. Today, we find not a trace of plants.
After the minister had left, nobody turned up to find out the fate of the plants let alone watering them and protecting them with tree guards.
The minister has been sensitising people of the district to plant saplings and leading them by example. The people of the district are seething with anger against the officials not following up with the saplings planted. Moreover, they come out with statistics of having planted over one crore saplings and show official records as evidence for their claims.
