Plants saplings on footpaths leaving no space for pedestrians

Banjara Hills: To make Haritha Haram successful by planting lakhs of trees, GHMC went overboard and planted trees on narrow and busy footpaths of Road No 1 Banjara Hills leaving no space for walking. And to protect the saplings tree guards have been installed causing more inconvenience. Several grievances have been made on twitter regarding the walking space taken up by the trees “Dear GHMC Please don't plant trees on footpaths #RightToWalk.” shared a user on twitter.

Also, GHMC has removed over 10,000 footpath encroachments in the city and has refurbished the existing footpaths. Which are now being painted and blocked with tiles. In order to plant saplings GHMC had to remove installed tiles on the footpaths. First funds for tile installation were sanctioned and now to remove the same tiles for planting saplings, it is sheer wastage of public money.

On the hindsight, if saplings grow to full trees there will be no space for movement on the footpaths. The pedestrians have to walk on roads or the trees have to be cut down. After a couple of years funds would be sanctioned to cut down the fully-grown trees to make space for pedestrians to walk freely instead of going around the trees.