The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike has floated a tender to get bidders to conduct the much-awaited tree survey in Bengaluru. In this project, it is said that every tree in the city will be photographed and tagged with the Global Positioning System. After a delay of close to three years, the BBMP is finally set to conduct a tree survey in the city.
According to the tender notice dated on April 29th, it calls on bidders to conduct a tree survey scientifically in the limits of 198 BBMP wards. This exercise has 2 objectives. Firstly, they have to maintain a count with details of every tree’s age, species, number, and to identify weak trees which may be unsafe during rain and wind. Secondly, the objective will help the civic agency undertake necessary involvement like pruning to ensure citizens’ safety.
Strict Conditions for Bidders
Senior BBMP official said, “ We have put out some strict orders for bidders, for example, they should have required expertise in tree sciences like having botanists, silviculturists or taxonomists. And, once the survey concludes, we will put up signboards highlighting rare trees in the city. This will help the citizen know better about the tree heritage of the garden city.”
May 15th is set as an official deadline to apply for the tender, following which the bidder will be given in full charge. The tree survey had found a mention in 2019-20 BBMP budget and Rs 2 crore had been allocated for the same.
The following survey was earlier allocated for 4 crores in the BBMP budget of 2014. Hence, the exercise was frozen as funds were diverted to other work. The survey again failed to take off as it was kept aside for the 2017-18 budget. However, the census will be conducted on the lines of Pune census of 2013, which followed a scientific methodology to map over 32 lakh trees, Officials added.
Sources: TOI
