Vijayawada Municipal Corporation striving to bring back greenery

Vijayawada: To create a healthy environment and to develop greenery at all possible places in the city, like canal bunds, open places, parks and other places, the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) is undertaking repairs and development works under the VMC limits.

Under the ambitious Amrut project, the greenery is being developed at various places in the city. The VMC has 137 parks under its limits and only 70 per cent of them are in use. A few parks are being jointly maintained by VMC and the welfare associations of respective residential colonies.

Among the main parks used by the citizens are Rajiv Gandhi park,  K L Rao park, Dr B R Ambedkar park, Raghavaiah park, Mahatma Gandhi park, Gora park, G V S  Sastry park and others are being developed by the VMC for public to spend quality time with their family members, said Assistant director Horticulture K Pradeep Kumar.

Speaking to The Hans India, Pradeep Kumar said the VMC had spent more than Rs one crore to develop the parks in the city and added under the Amruth project, they have developed the parks to attract the citizens. He said the VMC had developed KL Rao park, Rajiv Gandhi park and Raghavaiah park by providing all infrastructure facilities to public.

He said that apart from parks development under the VMC, they have been developing avenue plantation by planting saplings every Saturday. He said that they have already planted 5,000 saplings and in the next three months they would plant 10,000 saplings across the city. Over 5,000 plants will be planted at the open places in the city, he added.

Pradeep Kumar said that tenders were called for developing four parks under Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) scheme. To reduce pollution and for beautification of bunds and to attract the people, the VMC had taken Bandar canal beautification work in a stretch of 3 kms. He said this would restrict throwing of garbage into the canal and control pollution.