IE : BMC lays out plan to develop gardens and playgrounds : sept 3, 2007

IE : BMC lays out plan to develop gardens and playgrounds : sept 3, 2007

Civic body creates a new post of deputy municipal commissioner, gardens to ensure full utilisation of funds allocated this year

Sayli Udas-Mankikar

Mumbai, September 02: If your neighbourhood playground or garden turned into a garbage dump and the civic body did nothing last year, you now know why. According to a report presented by the civic administration to the Standing Committee, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) spent only 8.38 per cent of its total allocation of Rs 95 crore—works revenue budget—in 2006-07 for maintaining its gardens and playgrounds.
The BMC doesn’t want to stop short of turning these figures on their head this year though. The civic body has chalked out a Rs 400-crore extensive plan—Rs 230 crore capital expenditure budget and over Rs 100 crore works revenue budget—to take care of playgrounds and gardens in the city by creating a special authority under a deputy municipal commissioner, who will be in charge of gardens instead of the gardens superintendent. “Now, it will be his responsibility to monitor the progress of these estimates, which was previously not there. This will ensure accountability and vigilance,” explained Additional Municipal Commissioner (City) R A Rajeev, who is spearheading the project under the Gardens Department.

The budget of over Rs 400 crore has been distributed among three zones—city, western and eastern suburbs—and has been identified for specific projects in many cases.
An allocation of Rs 6 crore has been made for the development of new gardens obtained through Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) of the land surrendered by builders; Rs 4.3 crore has been set aside to upgrade existing gardens and Rs 34.4 crore has been kept for the maintenance of playgrounds in the city.

These budgetary allocations are up and above the provision of almost Rs 400 crore that the BMC had set aside for “Medians and Gardens Improvement Project” (see box), which, according to Rajeev, will change the face of the city’s gardens.

An amount of Rs 47 crore has been allocated for theme gardens—seven in all—including aqua parks that will come up in Powai and Dadar. A children’s park with modern equipment will be seen in each of the zones for which a budget of Rs 6 crore has been set aside. Also, a botanical garden is being planned in the eastern suburbs (Bhandup) for which an allocation of Rs 10 crore has been earmarked, besides a hi-tech nursery with an allocation of Rs 5 crore.
And with the BMC deciding to implement the caretaker policy on recreation grounds, the allocation will be applicable for over 200 plots of gardens and playgrounds the civic body has acquired.

“I do agree that last year we had been too ambitious about gardens’ allocations and projects that had been chalked out fell flat. We are more prepared this year with definite allocations and studied plans,” said Rajeev, who is spearheading the projects under the Gardens Department which currently handles 838 open spaces in the city and suburbs spanning over lakhs of square meters. BMC will hire contractors to do up medians and gardens
After having successfully redone road medians—uniformly coloured in yellow and black with matching green plant beds—on Mantralaya Road, DN Road and M G Road in South Mumbai, the BMC will now place the Rs 400 crore ‘medians and gardens improvement project’ for all the 24 wards before the Standing Committee for approval. “The idea is to appoint garden contractors for each ward, and they will be responsible for the maintenance and redevelopment of both medians and gardens in that ward,” said Additional Municipal Commissioner (City) R A Rajeev. According to Rajeev, the pilot project in South Mumbai made the civic body realise that it was not possible for the BMC to take up such a project across the municipal limits of the city. “Since we will have one contractor per ward, accountability will be easy,” he said. According to the proposal, the BMC will appoint agencies ward-wise— the project is in the tender stage . These agencies will be in charge of maintaining the medians and the gardens in that ward. The gardens and medians would be identified by the Local Area Ward Council, including corporators, and work—both construction and maintenance—will be carried out by the ward agencies. “The local elected representatives along with non-governmental organisations (NGO’s) know the area best, so they will play a key role in identifying the gardens and medians that are not maintained,” he Rajeev said. “In case of gardens, the contractor will take care of gardens which are not adopted. They will fence these along with a gate, arrange for security, a gardener and sprinklers,” he added. But for medians, the BMC has appointed a team of tree and plant experts who are involved in the selection of plants species to be planted in them.