Mumbai’s civic body doesn’t have any mechanism to stop tree fall incidents

Mumbai : Two people – Kanchan Nath (58) and Sharada Godeshwar (45), both from Chembur, lost their lives due to tree fall mishaps in Mumbai in just a span of five months.

But the city’s civic corporation hardly has any mechanism in place to prevent such incidents from taking place again in the future. As apart from allowing people to address the complaint regarding trees or getting easy permissions for tree trimming online, which was earlier tedious, as one has to go to the ward office with a photograph of the particular tree to get permission, nothing else has been put in place. And it seems the civic corporation has not made any serious efforts to tackle the rising risk of tree fall incidents.

Though the BMC conducts audit of trees twice in a year to supervise their health and condition, still 939 trees collapsed accidentally in 2017 and around four people lost their lives due to tree fall mishaps.

In addition, activists and experts have slammed the civic corporation for not having experts in their Tree Authority Committee. And due to lack of ‘handshake’ between the experts and Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the important body – ‘tree authority (BMC)’ panel is left half empty. The committee should have members from different political parties, horticulture experts and civic Commissioner who himself heads the panel but still ten positions to be filled by expert appoitment, are lying vacant.

Stalin D, from the environmental Non Government Organisation (NGO) Vanashakti said the tree authority which should preserve and protect the trees of Mumbai has lost their mandate with no expert involvement in it. It has become a body which is now only giving permission to cut the trees.

“Also the set norms states the experts of particular NGO who wish to be the empanalled member should have worked with BMC earlier, but the sad part is no one wants to work with them. And why anyone will? Like if a builder wants to cut the tree for his own benifit it will be definitely opposed by the experts. But these politicians and authorities are ok with it, as the builder will keep them happy. Hence, the difficulty lie over here.”

Ten seats on BMC’s Tree Authority Committee are lying vacant since the civic body has failed to appoint experts on the panel. Activists and experts have slammed the civic corporation over this

He further added in Mumbai there are many well known colleges who have Horticulture Department. One just have to name it and they will get the expert.

A senior civic officer from Garden Department said, “Till last year, the tree authority had passed a resolution that tree experts can be appointed from the NGO’s by putting ward wise notices. However, this authority has not yet passed any such resolution and thus the positions of the tree experts are vacant”.

Currently the BMC’s Tree Authority made in March 2017  have 15 members including civic chief Ajoy Mehta. After the BMC elections it has 6 members of Shiv Sena, 5 members of BJP, two from Congress and one from NCP. While, all 10 positions for the tree experts are lying vacant.

Renee Vyas, a botanist, said it’s a sad that the authority hasn’t hired any expert. “People like us who don’t have infrastructure have come forward and formed groups to save our trees. But the corporation who have resources, infrastructure lacks the will power. Tree are living beings they need proper care and nurturing only then they can survive, merely spending money will not help to protect the green lungs.”

In Mumbai there are 29.75 lakh lakh trees. Out of which 13.9 lakh are native trees and 15 lakh are non native trees.