To fulfil the dream of West Bengal’s new Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to transform “Kolkata into London”, the Kolkata Port Trust (KoPT) has also joined hands with the state government.
“We are also helping the state government in its effort to beautify Kolkata. KoPT has a major role to play on it as most of the river banks are under us. We have taken up a number of environment-friendly initiatives related to it and were a part of the coordination meeting held last week,” said KoPT chairman M L Meena, on the sidelines of the World Environment Day celebrations at Kolkata Dock today.
To develop and beautify the city on the lines of the British capital, the chief minister had conducted a coordination meeting of several agencies – including railways, RITES, KoPT, Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) and Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC).
“The port’s green initiatives include plantation of include plantation of 45,000 mangrove and salt tolerant trees along the banks of the river and converting our transaction into paperless (which helps to save about 30 trees per annum). However, oil spill is a main concern for us and we are taking steps to tackle it. For green initiatives only, we have kept about Rs 2 crore per year,” Meena said.
To give shape to Banerjee’s vision, a nodal panel was set up to come up with a roadmap in a month. “Technical and consultancy agency RITES is doing a study on this and we will come up with a proper plan on development soon. It is our chief minister’s dream and to fulfil it KoPT should play a major role, as city beautification depends a lot on how we manage our river fronts,” state urban development minister Firhad Hakim said. The School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi is also assisting the state in this project.
