Chief Secretary, Rajbala Verma on Friday directed officials of the Forest Department to speed up plantation work under Chief Minister’s Jan-Van Yojna and ensure that more proposal from the people should reach to the department. She also directed to do more publicity of the Jan Van Scheme so that more and more people become aware and use their personal land for the employment oriented plantation.
Verma, while conducting a review meeting with the officials of Forest and Environment Department, instructed to expand the forest area cover. Presently, only 30 per cent area is covered under forest. She asked the officer-in-charges to develop five regions as model wildlife conservation centre. Altogether, 12 wildlife conservation centres are there in the state, in different regions. Officials too have been instructed to finalize and allocate budget for the specific regions within stimulated timeframe.
In order to ensure security at two major parks which include Betla National Park and Medninagar Park, officials has been instructed to prepare the detail project report (DPR) at earliest. Verma has instructed the forest officials to check the forest land encroachment issue and also prepare a fresh report on forest land after mapping the entire region which comes under forest department.
CS issued instructions to create awareness regarding the encroachment at different divisions and officers must ensure to demarcate atleast ten such encroached areas. All the encroached forest land must be cleared as soon as possible.
Officers present in the meeting were also instructed to develop ‘forest regeneration site’ in different regions. All the divisions must be inspected and such site must be demarcated which has the scope of being developed as ‘forest regeneration site’. Mapping of all wildlife sanctuaries must be completed on time for long term and to ensure proper care and protection to wild species from getting extinct. All the zoos present in various districts must be rated according to the facilities available there.
For the promotion of forest goods, lac farming must be encouraged. High Yield Variety seeds must be developed for promotion of lac cultivation. Forest officers, in the meeting mentioned that, the department has received the proposal of planting trees in 800 acres land for which `10 crore has been allocated to the department to initiate the work phase wise. Trees like jackfruit, Tussar, Palash, Kusum etc must be planted to expand forest land and to provide employment to the local residents especially the village communities. Verma has asked the officers to figure out at atleast four divisions name for World Food Programme. CAMPA (Compensatory Afforestration Fund
management and Planning Authority project must be completed in four years. Inspection will be made by the third party to ensure the availability of total numbers of plants and trees in forest areas. Notably, for CAMPA project, the Government has allocated ` 4000 lakh and must be completed in nine years.