None of the two city corporations of Dhaka planted any trees in the capital in the last two years, leaving the allocations earmarked for that purpose unused.
Dhaka South City Corporation environment circle executive engineer Mohammad Towhid Siraj said Tk 10 lakh was allocated for tree plantation for the 2012-2013 fiscal year and Tk 25 lakh for 2011-2012 fiscal year of the undivided city corporation but the total fund remained unutilised because of confusion over planting a particular species of tree.
He said in 2011 there was a debate over planting North America and Chinese origin paulowmia trees, which were said to hazardous for the environment, and after that they could not decide which trees to be planted.
Towhid hoped that they would be able to start planting trees from the upcoming 2013-2014 financial year.
They are preparing a digital database on the number of trees planted after Dhaka City Corporation started its work and the number of the existing plants in the capital, he said.
At present, the environment circle of the city corporation is working on an umbrella project ‘Dhaka City Corporation ruined roads, drains and footpath development’ and regional offices of the city corporations are doing tree plantation work, said Towhid.
The DSCC area executive officers, however, said they did not know anything about tree plantation and they did not get any such order from the authorities concerned.
Another Tk 10 lakh was allocated for tree plantation in the 2012-2013 fiscal year for the Dhaka North City Corporation, said its environment circle superintendent engineer Tariq Bin Yosuf.
He said even there was no maintenance of the capital’s existing trees by the private organisations participating under city beautification project.
Tariq said proper maintenance mechanism needed to take care of the existing trees and those which would be planted in future.
He informed that at present some private organisations plant some trees in the capital though there is no specific data as the city corporations lack monitoring over those organisations’ beatification work.
Tariq said that after the split, Dhaka North City Corporation lacked space to run their office and a year was spent to cope up with other issues and tree plantation did not get priority.
-With New Age input
