Ludhiana: After a long gap the municipal corporation is giving a chance to the park management committees to highlight the issues being faced by them while handling the maintenance of the parks. For this purpose a meeting has been scheduled for January 3 at Guru Nanak Bhavan here.
The civic body officials are sending personal invites to the park management committee members and two members from each committee have been invited for their participation. The civic body authorities claimed that it would help in removing the hurdles being faced by the park management committees and parks could be developed properly.
The MC has 850 public parks in the city and over 600 parks are being handled by the park management committees. Before calling this meeting, the civic body officials also visited some of the parks and got videography done in the parks being developed beautifully.
Dr SB Pandhi from Partap Colony park management committee said, “It is a good step taken by the civic body if they want to give us a chance to speak in this regard and we are also ready with our suggestions for the betterment of parks. First of all, we want to raise the issue that the civic body only constructs the boundary walls and installs the grills in the name of park development, which is not enough.”
He said when they had developed a park they spent Rs 2.75 lakh on its overall development that came from residents’ contribution or from their pockets. He said the civic body should increase the amount they were getting for maintenance of these parks. He said secondly, the civic body had shortage of gardeners and they had to spend money from their pocket to pay the gardeners.
“Earlier, there used to be competitions of park management committees to judge development of parks, but even those competitions were not taking place now. We will request the authorities to organise these events so as to encourage the park management committees for better results,” he said.
Meanwhile, Dr APS Mann from Goodwill Park in BRS Nagar said, “The funds are a major concern for the park management committees because only a few residents who are actively participating in the development of parks contribute a little, while the rest hardly show concern for the same. Moreover, sometimes the park management committees are facing grudges of other residents when they seek permission to organise private functions in the public parks, but park management committee members deny as the MC has asked them not to allow any type of functions in the parks.” He said it was good initiative if they were given a chance to raise their issues.
NP Singh from Neelimohar Park in BRS Nagar said, “Though we will take up the major issues in the meeting only, but here I can say the park management committees do not get a free hand to take decisions like last year,S the wild growth of trees was not trimmed and when we started doing that somebody from the area complained to the civic body that we were axing trees. The officials came to the park and stopped the activity immediately.” He said regular trimming of trees was also required, so the MC should take the responsibility to handle it at its level or before taking any action they should listen to the park management committees.
MC commissioner Pardeep Sabharwal said, “We have kept this meeting to know the issues being faced by the park management committees and once we will come to know about their issues better solutions can be given. We want our public parks to be the best, so we are taking steps in this direction.”