NROCC And Partners Plant Trees On May Pen To Williamsfield Highway

The National Road Operating and Constructing Company (NROCC) recently joined forces with numerous partners to plant 400 trees along the alignment of the May Pen to Williamsfield leg of Highway 2000.

The event took place on International Day for Biological Diversity, which was observed on Saturday, May 22.

In an interview with JIS News, Environmental Manager at NROCC, Errol Mortley, explained that the event was part of a bigger initiative where NROCC plans to plant 30,000 trees over the next four years.

He pointed out that the exercise, which took place along the Melrose Hill Bypass in the vicinity of Hope Village, was intended to replace trees that were destroyed during construction.

“One of the concerns we had was that the bypass slightly encroached on an existing fruit orchard, and we thought that it would be in good faith if we partner with the Hope Village Community to replenish the orchard,” the Environmental Manager explained.

“We inspected it and we thought that it would be good to put in some trees that they had before and also add others, so we wanted to do 400 fruit trees of different varieties,” he added.

Mr. Mortley contended that the International Day for Biological Diversity was the best day to do the tree-planting exercise, under the theme ‘We are Part of the Solution’, which he further explained is the UN mantra.

He pointed out that the tree-planting goes beyond just the Melrose Hill Bypass.

“When you do a highway, you remove fruit trees from farms, and between Milk River and Williamsfield, we went through a number of farms, removed cash crops and some fruit trees, so we thought that it would be good to give back, to the farmers, fruit trees to replace what we took out, and where we had open plots we would now put a programme in place to do a blitz, as we call it, to plant trees,” Mr. Mortley said.

He noted that the partnership for the day involved the Highway 2000 family.

“We have China Harbour Engineering Company that did some of the ground preparation, and their senior management team actually participated. We have Trans Jamaican Highway which is the developer for the Highway 2000 East West, the Jamaica Infrastructure Operators as well as Stanley Consultants,” he said.

He added that volunteers from the University of the West Indies Rotaract Club, also partnered with NROCC for a second time on a tree-planting initiative, having done a similar exercise on the North South Highway in January 2021.

Members of the Hope Village community also came out to give their support. Mr. Mortley pointed out that many of those who did were senior citizens, adding that “they or their children will be here to benefit from the trees that were planted here today”.