Amid the construction works at Tiruppur Government Medical College Hospital, members of an NGO stepped in to transplant a decades old peepal tree from its premises on Thursday.
Estimated to be around 75 years old, the tree was initially planned to be felled for the construction purposes, said J. Gnanavelan, co-founder of the NGO Green ‘n’ Clean. Upon hearing this, he and founder A. Senthilkumar met with the hospital’s Dean Valli Sathyamoorthy in September requesting to not cut the tree and allow the organisation to help with the transplantation, he said.
After receiving the no-objection certificate (NOC) from the hospital, the team from the NGO proceeded to commence the transplantation process. Mr. Gnanavelan said that its branches were cut off and the trunk with the roots was lifted using an earthmover, which was transported to a private land in the Tiruppur Corporation limits on Thursday night for transplantation. “We have applied organic medicines on the roots for the tree’s growth,” he said.
Dr. Sathyamoorthy said that the tree was next to a building scheduled to be demolished to construct the hostel building for the medical college. The NOC was issued to the organisation in consultation with District Collector K. Vijayakarthikeyan, she said.
Based in Rayapuram, Green ‘n’ Clean has been involved in various environmental activities in Tiruppur district for the past 15 years, including the plantation of 1.33 lakh saplings, according to Mr. Gnanavelan.
