Union
Minister of Road Transport & Highways and Shipping Shri Nitin Gadkari launched
the initial plantation drive on 1,500 km of National Highways at a cost of
about Rs 300 crore under the National Green Highways Mission in New Delhi
today. The launch was announced at a workshop orgnized by the National Green
Highways Mission on the theme "Green Highways Projects: Way Ahead. Speaking
on the occasion Shri Gadkari said that the greening project has a huge
potential to generate jobs and can prove to be a game-changer for agriculture
and rural economy. Greening of one km of highway provides employment to ten
people. Today's launch of 1,500 km under the Mission will employ 15,000 people
. The Minister further said that the project may even be linked with the NREGA
scheme.
Under the Green Highways Project, the government has made it
mandatory to set aside 1 per cent of the total project cost of any NH contract
to a Green Fund corpus that will be used for plantation purposes. The
afforestation is expected to help in sequestering approximately 12 lakh mt
carbon annually.
Organized
in line with Green Highways Policy – 2015, today's workshop was a step forward
in actualizing the vision of developing eco-friendly and green National
Highways. The event saw the unveiling of Guidelines for Implementation, the
Vision Document and the Knowledge Reports of the project.
The Guidelines document,
developed by National Green Highways Mission is in compliance to the directives
of Green Highways Policy (GHP) 2015 issued by Ministry of Road Transport &
Highways. The document incorporates the recommendations of the GHP and acts as
a comprehensive roadside plantation and management manual.
The Vision Document of National Green Highways
Mission
will essentially define the approach National Green Highway Project intends to
take for planning, implementation and monitoring of Green Highways Project. The
Vision document, comprising strategy, mission and action plan for 2016-2026,
focuses on core issues, future roadmaps and success indicators for effective
implementation of Green Highways Project
NGHM-YES BANK Knowledge Report on ‘Transplanting for
Growth’ puts
transplantation at the centre of discussion in the mission of greening our
highways. The report presents a compelling case for taking up transplantation
as the preferred technique for plantation along the highways.
The following MoUs were also signed on the occasion
:
|
Partnering
Organizations
|
Length awarded for Green Highways Projects
|
|
NGHM-NHAI and
Haryana Forest Department
|
418 Kms
|
|
NGHM-NHAI
Andhra Pradesh Urban Greening and Beautification Corporation Ltd
|
360 Kms
|
In
addition to this a charter was signed between NGHM and YES BANK to
create awareness on greening of highways and explore synergies between NGHM’s
objectives and YES BANK’s CoP21 commitment of planting 20 lakh saplings by
2020. A testimony to this charter was the awareness program that was launched
across 400 locations through YES BANK’s YES COMMUNITY initiative.
The
event also saw the launch of ‘Adopt a Green Highway’ Program .The National
Green Highway Mission initiated the program’ to engage corporates, Public
Sector units, Government organizations and other institutions for developing
green corridor along National Highways through plantation and allied activity
on avenue, median and other available nearby land patches . Besides this ‘Kisan
Harit Rajmarg Yojana’ was also launched on the occasion. The Yojana
is a pilot scheme to extend green belt beyond the existing ‘Right of Way’
of highways by engaging farmers and providing alternative livelihood option to
the nearby communities.
A National Green Highways Mission Mobile App was
also launched on the occasion. The mobile application will enable the
management to monitor all the projects with real time data from the fields.
The technology will assist in identifying the bottlenecks quickly and ensure
speedy and successful implementations of the projects.
The
workshop, was also attended by Shri Rao Narbir Singh, Hon’ble Minsiter PWD and
Forests, Haryana, Shri Sanjay Mitra ,Secretary, Ministry of Road Transport
& Highways, Shri Raghav Chandra Chairman, National Highway Authority of
India and other senior officials.
***
UM/NP
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