Attempting to save a few trees almost cost them their lives. On Sunday morning, a group of activists landed up on Madhapur-Gachibowli stretch to translocate 30 trees only to see that the underground electric cables had surfaced near the location.
The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has been constructing an underpass and flyover as part of the Strategic Road Development Plan (SRDP) near Raheja Mindspace and Biodiversity Park. The Corporation permitted Dhruvansh, an NGO, to carry out the translocation of 30 trees that needed to be cleared for the project.
As soon as the members of the organisation along with a few volunteers reached the spot, they learnt that the challenging part was not displacing the trees and its roots. Mangled electric wires carrying 33 KV along with telecom cables were spotted around trees.
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“We could not take a chance by going ahead with the translocation,” said Madhulika Chowdhary, founder of Dhruvansh. “There were electric cables around the tree roots and the heavy machine used for tree translocation could have cut the wires during the process resulting in electrocution. The engineers executing the SRDP project checked the cables using an apparatus and informed that there was high electric field near the trees.”
Although the GHMC officials were informed about the situation, they did not turn up at the site because of which the work had to be postponed.
Around 30 avenue trees would be translocated to Manikonda and Narsingi by the organisation.
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