RT&H Minister kick-starts National Green Highways Mission

Road Transport and Highways Minister Shri Nitin Gadkari has launched the plantation drive on 1,500 kilometers of National Highways at a cost of about 300 crore rupees under the National Green Highways Mission in New Delhi. The launch was announced at a workshop yesterday organized by the National Green Highways Mission on the theme Green Highways Projects: Way Ahead. Speaking on the occasion, Shri Gadkari said that the project has a huge potential to generate jobs and can prove to be a game-changer for agriculture and rural economy. He said, green cover of one kilometer of highway will provide employment to ten people. 

He said, the project may be linked with the NREGA scheme. 

 An official release said, under the Green Highways Project, the government has made it mandatory to set aside one per cent of the total project cost of any National Highway contract to a Green Fund corpus that will be used for plantation purpose.