More than Rs 15 crore expenditure has been done on plantation works and environment protection work from last few years but nothing has been invested in place to take care of forest fire emergencies
Still forest wing of Shrine Board is using Stone Age techniques to counter fire and during forest fires it becomes excursion for official of Shrine Board to sit in jungles enjoying readymade food and watch burning forest
Lt Governor Manoj Sinha should initiate inquiry against such delinquent officers
GY CORRESPONDENT
Jammu, jan 20
Although there is dry spell but one cannot deny there is lack of strategy that forest fire taking its toll on beautiful forest vegetation of Mata Ka Bhawan area, Panch Pandav hills from past three-four days — it is due to the total negligence of IFS officer posted in Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board who when called straightaway denied to say anything about such a major fire incident Government should shunt out such unprofessional peoples who never take responsibility of his wrongs.
The forest fire in the Trikuta Hills of Mata Vaishno Devi Ji is from last three –four days and unprofessional manner fire watcher of Shrine Board’s defunct forest wing and volunteers are on job to extinguish huge uncontrolled and unmanaged fire with Stone Age methods. On the ground, it is total negligence and unprofessional approach of forest officials of SMVDSB under the command of Nero of Rome style IFS officer because his Range Officers has not prepared any basic fire lines in the area. A fire line is a gap in vegetation created to hinder the combustible material in the forest. Due to good rainfall in the summer months last year, so no forest fires took place started early. Due to lack of rainfall in the winter this year, there was no moisture in the air and soil, so the fire took place. On the other hand there was lack of adequate deployment of forest fire watchers usually employed during dry spells of summers and winters. Since entire Trikuta Hills have adequate water resources but no fire hydrant systems has been installed on these ranges despite they know very well that these vulnerable locations of trikuta hills are fire prone and every year it get effected by the forest fire damaging green forest worth billions.
More than rupees 15 crore expenditure has been done on plantation works and environment protection work from last few years but nothing has been invested in place to take care of forest fire emergencies. Still forest wing of Shrine Board is using Stone Age techniques to counter the fire and during forest fires it becomes excursion for the official of Shrine Board to sit in jungles enjoying readymade food and watch burning forest. Due to the total negligence and immaturity of IFS officer a big portion of forest worth millions of rupees has been burnt. He is dedicatedly deputed to oversee the forest wing of Shrine Board but he never has time to devote on forest activities. This is major negligence on his part is criminal in nature. Lt. Governor should initiate Inquiry against such delinquent officers who are directly responsible for such big fire incident.
