A week after the death of a 63-year-old woman at the Sion station, the garden department of the municipal corporation has made a detailed, ward-wise report of the current status of trees in the city and to ensure the necessary pre-monsoon preparations are carried out well in time.
While sources told dna, that there has been an exchange of letters between the F north ward and the garden department in this regard, officials from the garden department say the incident took place before the work order was issued to the contractor. "We are still looking into the matter, the contractor may not be at fault in this case," a civic official said.
According to the report, a copy of which is with the dna, 16,25,882 is the number of trees recorded in Mumbai so far as per the ongoing census. Of these the BMC has surveyed 91,312 trees in the municipal roads and premises and 37,630 dangerous trees have been trimmed and balanced till date.
In the private and government premises, however, the number is alarmingly low, as only 1,491 trees have been surveyed by the BMC and action has been taken only on 11 trees.
Joint municipal commissioner SS Shinde says the number of trees surveyed in private and government compounds is low as the trend of societies approaching BMC for elimination or trimming of dangerous trees is still catching on. "Of late, several active societies are availing the BMC services for eliminating and trimming of dangerous trees, but since it's a new service, it's still in the process of catching on," he said.
However, the BMC had surveyed the highest number of trees at the K west ward with 8876 trees surveyed on the municipal roads and premises and action being taken on 4126 of them, and 797 trees surveyed on private and the government premises, and action being taken on six of them.
The report also revealed that so far, the civic body has collected only Rs38,091 from private societies for attending to the trees. Moreover, it has also collected Rs14,000 as penalty from contractor, with Rs4,000 being collected from a contractor in K west ward and Rs10,000 from a contractor in H west (Bandra and khar west).
The census so far
According to the report, the BMC has surveyed 598 dead trees across the city, while action was taken only on 374 of them so far.
The report further revealed that the S ward (Bhandup) and the K east (Andheri east) ward had managed to retain their record of being the city's greenest with 15,9217 and 15,6608 trees recorded in the wards respectively.
The K west ward (Andheri/ Vile Parle) stands third with 13,6262 trees in the ward, while the number of trees in R central ward (Borivli), which was in the third position in the last census, came down to 11,734 from the 1.44 lakh trees it recorded.
According to the 2008 census, Mumbai has a total of 1.9 million trees, of which 1.03 million were recorded on private land.
Civic officials are hoping that by the completion of the census, the number of trees recorded would be 25 per cent higher than the last census.
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