Civic apathy shrinks city greenery

KOLKATA: The city is rapidly losing its greenery. Nearly half of the 315 parks in Kolkata are being ‘encroached’ upon, suggests a study done by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. Ironically, the study concedes that in 24 per cent of the cases, KMC itself is guilty of encroachment.
A KMDA study has revealed that several wards in the city do not even have one per cent of its area as ‘open space’ with some wards having as little as 0.1 to 0.3 per cent as open space, informed environment expert of the urban planning body Tapas Ghatak.
Although several corporate houses have undertaken the responsibility of maintaining parks, that is hardly a solution, felt a panel of experts discussing the issue on Doordarshan Kolkata’s weekly programme Jukti-Tokko. They favoured the idea of local clubs or self-help groups maintaining the parks and authorising them to charge a small entry fee as is done at the Millennium Park on Strand Road.
Ironically, the forest department admits to having as many as 450 idle gardeners in the city since the department has no jurisdiction over parks or roads. “We work when requisitioned by other agencies which own or control metropolitan land,’’ said the divisional forest officer in charge of urban greening Somnath Mukherjee.
Strangely, those entrusted with the task — KMC employees — claimed to be ‘overworked’.
The lack of co-ordination among civic authorities does not end there. Mayor-in-council members never attend any meeting of the environment cell of the Kolkata Metropolitan Planning Authority. Nor is the KMDA involved or associated with the implementation of the Rs 1,920 crore Calcutta Environmental Improvement Project, which, significantly, has no allocation for greening the city.
The Kolkata Improvement Trust spends around 40 per cent of its budget on salaries even as parks like Subhas Sarobar in Beliaghata languish.
None of the agencies has any power to impose penalties. They cannot take action against corporate houses and government departments, which put up huge hoardings nailed on trees or chop branches without permission. Nor can they take action against Puja committees or fair organisers as well as political parties who dump garbage and non-bio-degradable polythene packets in public places.
"Many Puja organisers like the ones at Kumartuli park, Shyam park and Jorabagan parks hold massive fairs next to the Puja pandals, ruining our greening efforts.
Deshbandhu park remains booked for months by schools which hold their annual sports. But they never care about re-greening," lamented Ranajit Samanta, special officer at the KMC parks department. Green activist Subhas Dutta demanded legislation empowering bodies to take actions against the offenders including politicians.