Scheme to promote planting in Lefkoşa
A NEW park containing an old people’s care home is at the planning stage in Lefkoşa, it has been disclosed.
The development was revealed during a ceremony to launch a new initiative — a combined project by Lefkoşa Municipality, the Cyprus Turkish Construction Contractors’ Union and Boray Developments — to promote urban planting.
Under the scheme, aimed at making the city greener, the municipality says it will now only grant building permission in return for planting trees, whose number will be determined by the size of the proposed development. Levent College pupils joined officials and staff from the three organisations in digging in 350 saplings in the Lefkoşa district of Ortaköy last Friday. It was hoped to site a total of 1,000 trees throughout the capital this week, rolling the scheme out across the country if it is adopted by other municipalities. Opening the Ortaköy planting ceremony, Lefkoşa Mayor Mehmet Harmancı said: “Naturefriendly development is a matter of vision and today the first step has been taken as a part of that vision.
“We are setting a model example by granting construction licences backed by a tree-planting regulation based on the number of square metres of the proposed building. The municipal council, in working towards the city’s development, is also aiming to also increase our source of oxygen through the new trees.”
Contractors’ union chairman Cafer Gürcafer divulged plans for the new park and old folk’s home, saying the areas of Lefkoşa’s green spaces could eventually triple that of new buildings.
Boray Developments director Aykut Mazhar said his company had “great plans” to initially plant 10,000 trees, expanding to 100,000 across the country.
Some 300 palm and pine trees were also planted in Güzelyurt on Monday, involving mayor Mahmut Özçınar and staff from the municipality’s parks and gardens unit, as part of the local authority’s Serhatköy landscaping project.