PWD shares major chunk of almost 80% of the total pendency across North and South Goa
PANAJI
With 43k saplings/ plantation pending in lieu of trees cut for various State and Central government projects in last five years, the State Tree Authority, taking serious cognizance, has warned that the failure to comply with the mandatory condition of compensatory plantation, will lead to “adverse ramification” against the user agencies.
STA, chaired by the Chief Secretary, during its meeting last month, noted that almost 43,117 trees are yet to be planted as part of compensatory plantation towards tree felling, in the last five years. The Public Works Department (PWD) shares a major chunk that is almost 80 per cent of the total pendency – which comes to around 34,518 trees across North and South Goa.
Central agencies like Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Railway Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL), Indian Navy and Goa Tamnar Transmission Power Limited (GTTPL) have also got huge backlog ranging between 1000-1800, each.
During the meeting it was reiterated that “non-compliance to the terms and conditions stipulated by Tree Authority could lead to adverse ramification against the agency/organisations, while considering their future proposals”.
The STA has directed all the departments/ user agencies to draw a plan of execution and submit the same during the next meeting.
As per the data, PWD has got a backlog of 33,351 trees in North Goa alone while another 1,162 is in South district towards highway expansion. Similarly, RVNL has failed to undertake replantation of 1,152 trees in South and 666 in North Goa towards their double tracking project.
The ONGC has to plant 1,497 trees for their proposed expansion project in Betul, South Goa while the Indian Navy has 1137 trees to be planted in the North. The GTTPL has got 1029 tree pendency.
The other departments include Civil Aviation (450), Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation (396), Information Technology (360), Goa Tourism Development Corporation (291) among others.
The permissions for tree felling are granted on a condition that the project proponent will undertake compensatory planting of indigenous forest tree species five times in lieu of trees of species other than Acacia to be felled. For the trees of Acacia species to be felled, they have to plant three times of those trees.
In the last one and half year the tree authority has granted permissions to fell over 6500 trees across the State for various projects.
