About a year and half ago, the Corporation playground on Kamaraj Salai in R.A. Puram was much sought after by the civic body. The playground was used to store fallen trees within the limits of Zone — 13 (Adyar) of the Corporation during cyclone Vardah in December 2016. In fact, a public notice by the civic body inviting people to participate in the auction, held a month later in January 2017, still remains on the walls of the playground.
Now, the spacious sports facility seems to serve only stray cattle and dogs in the neighbourhood. Spread across 15,600 sq.ft of land, the playground is being used as a dump yard by locals. Plastic and food waste can be seen all over the ground. Empty liquor bottles, water packets, torn slippers and clothes are also seen in the playground. The gates are rusted and broken. Most of the tiles on the compound wall are damaged. Cattle feed on the waste dumped in the playground. “Due to poor maintenance of the playground, many residents including students spend their leisure time at the park opposite the playground,” says C. Sairam, a resident of Mylapore.
Interestingly, the playground is surrounded with public utilities such as a Corporation community hall, a post office, an e-seva centre and a police booth. More importantly, the office of the local assistant engineer of the Corporation, who is in-charge of the playground, is located adjacent to the playground and remains a mute spectator to the what miscreants are doing to the playground. With autorickshaws parked along the compound wall blocking the main entrance of the playground, miscreants evade the notice of the policemen at the police booth, which is just a few hundred yards from the playground, especially at night.
Residents have urged the civic body to initiate steps to develop the playground into an indoor stadium for the benefit of youngsters in the neighbourhood. Unlike in the city outskirts where large tracts of open lands are available, such a spacious public playground is difficult to find in congested localities like R.A. Puram and Mylapore.
Residents cite the example of the community hall, which was built with funds from the MPLAD (Member of Parliament Local Area Development) Scheme. Residents say contributions from local MLA and MP from their constituency funds can be sought by the Corporation to pool the resources to build a small stadium.
We don’t have any plans to develop the playground into a sports facility as we need such plots to store materials and also for use in emergencies like floods and to organise camps,” says a Corporation official.