After facing flak for cutting down trees, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has signed a two-year contract of Rs 116 crore with 23 firms to maintain trees in Mumbai, both public and private premises.
According to the Hindustan Times, the newly-hired contractors will look after 29.75 lakh trees under the BMC’s jurisdiction till March 2021. The BMC, in the agreement, has stated that the contractors will have to trim the trees, treat them for infections, remove concrete within a 1.5m radius around trunks and also remove dead trees ahead of the rains. “The BMC has no data on the exact number of dead trees but the contractors will work on the basis of the complaints. The estimated maintenance cost has been drafted by each ward, based on the number of trees which might need special attention,” Rambhau Das, deputy commissioner of the BMC’s garden department told the leading daily.
The two-year contract of Rs 116 crore translates to an average of Rs 195 per tree on a yearly basis, which some activists feel is too low and which will give rise to corruption. Nilesh Baxi, a former independent expert on the BMC’s tree authority panel, told the Hindustan Times, “Given the rising number of falling trees and the casualties they lead to, this amount is too low. If only Rs 195 is paid for each tree on an average, obviously the contractor is not going to pay due attention to all the trees.”
