While chairing a meeting to review New Green Highways Policy (Plantation) and to discuss use of new technologies in road construction through video conference today, Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari said that it should be our mission to reduce cost of construction by 25 per cent and for this new technologies are required.
While discussing new technologies in road construction, he said that specific areas like hilly areas, border areas and coastal areas need different approach and technologies. He appreciated the use of such technology in road construction in Andaman and Nicobar and motivated National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL), a fully owned company of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, to follow the example in rest of the projects.
The Minister also launched ‘Harit Path’, a mobile app to monitor the plantations through geo-tagging and web-based GIS enabled monitoring tools. The app has been developed by NHAI to monitor location, growth, species details, maintenance activities, targets and achievements of each of its field units for each and every plant under all plantation projects. While inaugurating the mobile app, the minister emphasised on strict monitoring of plantation and transplantation of trees.
While discussing the issue of transplantation of trees, Gadkari said that it should be the ministry’s mission to save all the trees from being cut and specialised agencies equipped with new technologies should be hired for the purpose. The minister stressed upon using local indigenous material like jute, coir, etc for strengthening purposes. He also said that right choice of species suiting local conditions is also very important