Grassroute members assisted the BPCL team in planting Mangrove saplings at their Shore Tank Farm area, Puthuvype today. A hundred saplings were planted on both sides of a small canal on the western boundary of the campus.
As it is a high-security zone, entry there was very difficult. Also, we were not allowed to take photographs. Even mobile phones were not allowed. We started our work at 11:30 AM. There were two workers from BPCL who helped us a lot with the planting.
Mr Shubham Khatri, the Chief Manager (Project Technical), invited us to have a consultation earlier in the first week of November 2022. After the site visit, Mr Khatri kept calling us regularly for follow-ups until the planting.
“As a matter of fact this planting proposal came from the Kerala Govt. and they asked us to plant only 36 saplings. But we decided to plant 100 saplings finally. And I enjoyed the planting really well.”
— Mr Shubham Khatri, Chief Manager (Project Technical),
The species we planted were Rhizophora mucronata which was taken from our own nursery. To avoid plastic, all the saplings were kept in bamboo pots. We had a lot of trouble digging the pits and planting the mangroves as the canal was filled with solid soil instead of mud. Therefore, it took more than two and a half hours to plant a hundred saplings.
By 2:30 PM we could finish the planting. Everything was done well and perfectly. But the only disappointment is that we are not able to come here from time to time to assess the growth of these saplings due to high-security checks.
