Mumbai: A citizen group has complained that multiple healthy trees along the Western Express Highway, from Vile Parle (East) to Andheri (East), have been indiscriminately trimmed and reduced to sticks to improve the visibility of large commercial hoardings. BMC garden department officials differed with the group, the Watchdog Foundation, and said that the branches of these trees were leaning onto the footpaths or roads, or were blocking traffic signals or light poles, and they had photographs from before the trimimng to prove their point.The Watchdog Foundation said the trees had posed no threat to pedestrians or motorists. It said the excessive hacking of healthy branches appeared to be a deliberate act carried out by the hoarding contractor in collusion with officials. A BMC garden department official said the road in question is a service road along the Western Express Highway. “This road connects the Western Express Highway to SV Road and always has heavy vehicular traffic. Trimming of trees located along this road is carried out to clear the branches leaning towards the road, footpath, light poles, and traffic signals to ensure the safety of the public and to reduce the obstruction to vehicular movement and pedestrians,” the official said.Godfrey Pimenta of the Watchdog Foundation said heads must roll for the loss of green cover. “We demand the immediate arrest of the contractor along with the suspension of officials concerned. We also demand the immediate suspension of the licence granted to contractors who have erected multiple hoardings and that the hoardings be dismantled. Mumbai already suffers from a low tree-to-person ratio, approximately one tree per four residents,” Pimenta said.
