Telangana Government to crown ULBs with awards to boost green lung spaces

Hyderabad: The government is introducing a new programme for the urban local bodies in the State named 'Green Space Index' and proposes to give awards to the best performing municipality/corporation which takes up drive to increase green cover in its jurisdiction.

Announcing the new scheme on Sunday, Municipal Administration Minister KT Rama Rao said that the aim of the programme is to encourage civic bodies to increase the green cover in towns. The programme would be based on the guidelines on increasing green space and open spaces issued by the Housing and Urban Affairs department of the Central government.

Telangana government would be in the forefront to provide better standard of living in towns and increase greenery which is essential these days, said Rama Rao.

The Minister recalled that the government was taking up massive plantations under Haritha Haram to increase green cover in the State, and added that towns would also implement these programmes successfully.

The municipalities which perform exceptionally well in increasing the green cover would be awarded every year, which would result in competitiveness among the ULBs for increasing the green cover index. Importance would be given to development of parks, unique designs in plantations, increasing roadside greenery and also residential plantations, he added.

The government would use GIS, satellite images, photography, videograph, geo tagging for recording existing green cover and also comparing after completion of one year and would be examining how far the green cover has increased. For the award, 85 per cent weightage would be given for green cover and five per cent for innovative measures taken up for increasing green cover and 10 per cent to the unique designs in plantation and best municipality would be selected through this process.

Apart from the Green Space Index award, the government would give awards to best distribution of urban green space, maximum urban green space, per capita urban green space, roadside plantation categories. This program would be starting from this year and would be continuing for four years and increase the green cover to a large extent, said the minister.