Steel major Bokaro Steel Plant celebrated New Year’s Day on Friday by announcing its resolution to plant one lakh trees in the city in the next 12 months.

To achieve the goal, Director in-charge, Bokaro Steel Plant, Amarendu Prakash made an appeal to each family residing in the township to plant at least one tree in 2021, saying that the company will provide them with free saplings by installing several counters.

“We have four lakh residents in the Bokaro Steel Plant township, which roughly means one lakh families. If each family plants a tree we will achieve our target of planting one lakh trees in 2021,” Prakash said, adding that saving the environment for future generations is a major concern of the company.

The director asked residents to take precautionary measures for Covid-19.

However, all this failed to impress them as Prakash did not address major issues in the city. Problems like rising encroachment of quarters and land, growing theft of electricity and water, hindrance in expansion of Bokaro Airport with encroachment on the company’s land, problems faced by owners of commercial plots, Bokaro Steel Plant-dependent SMEs growing sick in lack of orders, installation of solid waste plant and others remained unaddressed.

Instead, in an online interaction via Facebook, Prakash went on to talk about business-related achievements, saying that the company in December has made the highest ever cash collection of Rs 2,200 crore by selling its steel products. The amount collected is also the highest, in comparison to other steel plants of the parent company, Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), he said.

“Our team has made it by increasing the quality of our product and reducing production costs. We are progressing. Our production and performance are improving month by month,” Prakash said.

“This New Year we should also make a commitment to ourselves to make ‘Every month- A better month’. We will work with a commitment to make every month better than the past one. Like we will perform better in January than December and will follow till the end of this year. Production of hot metal, hot roll coil and cold roll coil was the best in December,” he added.

Prakash also said that all the services in the township will be made online to ensure transparency and less time-consumption. From attending to complaints to its completion, everything will be online for the residents, he said. People can lodge complaints online about the civil or other problems that they face in quarters.

“We have already introduced this online submission of note-sheets and other documents inside the plant and in the coming six months’ time, all the services will be made online for the benefit of people. It will speed up work and decision making, and is time-saving too,” said Prakash.

He also announced to celebrate 2021 as “Sports and WellBeing Year”.

Prakash appealed to residents to come forward and participate in the sports events organised by the BSL all round this year. Prakash pointed out that Bokaro is the only town in the country which has bagged the status of “Global Active City”.They will celebrate this year as a sports festival organising marathon, cycling, online chess, and other sports events. For that to happen, he sought the participation of all the residents of the town.