The district administration has set a record by producing one crore seed balls involving people of all the 210 gram panchayats in the district.
On an average each village produced 50,000 seed balls and about a dozen villages made one lakh each following the call given by District Collector A. Devasena.
The Jangaon District has just 1% of forest cover as against the State average of 33%. The district is rocky and full of hillocks all over. It was decided to increase the forest cover and hence the district administration embarked on the Herculean task.
Speaking to The Hindu , the Collector said they would plant two crore plants – one crore saplings and dispersal of one crore seed balls. The plantation would begin with the second phase of Haritha Haram in July first week while dispersal of seed balls would take place after witnessing a good rainfall for a day or two.
According to her, the administration procured 98 lakh saplings of which one lakh each of eucalyptus, mango, teak and other fruit-bearing plants.
Contour trenches were dug up on all hillocks and it runs to 7.5 lakh running metres. It was done to ensure survival of plants and is easy to grow plants in trenches.
All the MNREGS labour, students, NGOs were involved in a big way to make the programme a grand success.
The Collector said that they had identified 7,600 acres of government land – mostly hillocks and 1,900 acres of private land to undertake plantation on a grand scale.
“We got tremendous response from the public. It is done like a mass movement. We are happy that nowhere such a task is undertaken. Our priority is to increase the forest cover in the district,” she said.
