One percent of playgrounds, three percent of parks have drinking water facility in Bengaluru

BENGALURU: More than half of the parks and playgrounds in Bengaluru have turned into a dumping yard. A survey by Janaagraha on open spaces said 54 per cent of the 1,115 parks in the city are littered with garbage, while garbage is dumped in 70 per cent of the 192 playgrounds.

Out of 709 square kilometres of city’s geographic area, only 19 square kilometres are parks and playgrounds. According to Urban and Regional Development Plan Formulation and Implementation Guidelines of the Ministry of Urban Development for cities with population greater than one million, it should be 10 square metre of open space per capita, but in Bengaluru it is 2.2 square metres. This would require an addition of 67 square kilometres, the survey said.

Sapna Karim, Head Civic Participation, Janaagraha told mediapersons that they surveyed all 1,115 parks and 192 playgrounds that come under BBMP.“The survey consisted of 10 questions for each of them. It was undertaken by a survey team who were provided with customised mobile application developed to capture the survey data. Data was validated with geo-tagged pictures. The survey continued for two months,’’ she said.She further added public had no access to 21 per cent of the parks in the city.

The survey also said only 56 per cent had adequate lighting, while 54 per cent of them were littered with garbage. The parks across the city did not have drinking water and availability of toilets. “Only three per cent of the parks in city have drinking water facilities and only six per cent of them have toilets,’’ she said.
On positive note, 80 per cent of the parks have walking tracks and 77 per cent of them have seating areas. Parks are more in number in inner wards than the outlying ones.

On playgrounds, Sapna said only one per cent has drinking  water facility while four per cent playgrounds have toilets. 70 per cent of playgrounds were littered with garbage. This apart, 49 per cent of playgrounds lack lighting facilities. On a positive note, 91 per cent of the playgrounds were found functional and 71 per cent of them security personnel.The BBMP spent `101 crore on parks and playgrounds in 2016-17 and allocated `165 crore in 2017-18.

1,115 parks and 192 playgrounds

coming under BBMP surveyed