Kolkata: Overgrown Salt Lake parks to be cleaned before Puja

KOLKATA: The condition of several parks inside the blocks in Salt Lake, where Durga Puja is organised every year, is in poor state with tall weeds and creepers growing along with damaged swings and slides. The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) ward coordinators have been asked to clean up the parks before Puja. TOI on Wednesday visited a number of parks across Salt Lake to check o the condition. While there are many parks that are well maintained, some need immediate attention.
A portion of the HB block park boundary wall has been damaged and broken for quite sometime and has not been repaired. Grass and weeds could be seen overgrowing.

At the adjacent GD block park, damaged paver blocks and rubbish were spotted dumped and stacked on the footpath surrounding the park. “The civic authorities had taken up work of revamping the park which stopped mid-way as the rubbish and paver blocks have been stacked at the place,” said a block committee member.
At AD block park, the children segment is almost inaccessible with tall weeds and creepers and the swings and slides are badly damaged. A few plastic packets were also spotted lying inside. Locals said that most of the parks had a facelift before the assembly elections this year, but has not been maintained since then. “We clean the portion where the puja pandal is set up but we cannot look after maintenance of the parks,” said GD block committee president Kumar Shankar Sadhu.
“Most of the parks are well maintained and looked after by the respective ward committees. Grass and weeds have grown up in some due to the monsoon and could be cut with electric grass cutters once the rain scales down,” said BMC board of administrators chairperson Krishna Chakraborty.