Ahmedabad residents of private housing societies can now pay tree-trimming charges online at the site where the service is requested, after the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation decided to activate an on-the-spot payment facility. The change was announced at the civic body’s standing committee meeting while officials reviewed the implementation of its Tree Trimming and Green Waste Collection policy.
The policy, introduced last month, allows residents to apply online for tree-trimming services. Under the new arrangement, an online collection module will allow applicants to pay the prescribed charge and receive a receipt directly on the spot, standing committee chairman Kamlesh Patel said.
Patel said instructions had been issued to make the facility operational immediately. The move follows complaints from residents who were required to visit civic centres to pay charges after raising requests for tree trimming. The new process is intended to remove that additional visit from the service workflow.
The committee’s review also covered the cleaning of water tanks maintained by the civic body. The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation has 243 water tanks, and each tank is required to be cleaned twice a year according to a fixed schedule, Patel said.
Officials told the committee that 96 tanks had been cleaned as scheduled so far. The committee directed officials to ensure that cleaning takes place regularly and that the work is continuously monitored. The supplied report did not specify the locations of the tanks cleaned or the deadline for completing the remaining scheduled work.
The meeting also addressed two plots in Motera and Ognaj that had been allotted to the Uttar Gujarat Vij Company Limited on 99-year leases for the construction of sub-divisional offices. According to the civic review, the allotment decision was taken in 2023, but the utility has neither paid the prescribed land price nor started construction despite repeated notices.
The estate department has now been asked to begin the process of repossessing the two plots. It has also been instructed to identify other allotted plots where payments have not been made or deadlines have expired, and to initiate cancellation proceedings in accordance with the applicable rules.
The three decisions place routine civic services, public health-related infrastructure maintenance and municipal land management on the same administrative agenda. For residents seeking tree trimming, the immediate operational change is the introduction of payment and receipt generation at the point of service. For water-tank maintenance and utility land allotments, the next steps depend on monitoring by the concerned civic departments and action under the applicable rules.
