Ten city parks will soon have open gyms.
The environment and forest department has chalked out a list of parks where the facility has to be made available.
At present, there are three open gyms at Gandhi Maidan, out of which, two are functional and one will be inaugurated in the next fortnight.
The third gym, which has still not been inaugurated at the Maidan is women-only, while the other two are unisex.
According to officials of the forest department, the work on the open gyms has started at a few parks, including Rajdhani Vatika or Eco Park (near new secretariat), Shivaji Park (Kankerbagh), Veer Kunwar Singh Park (Hardinge Road) and SK Puri Park (near Nageshwar Colony).
"The decision to start open gyms in city parks was taken after receiving a good response at the existing open gyms at Gandhi Maidan. The gyms will benefit people who cannot afford commercial gyms. The idea of exercising in the greens has its own charm," said environment and forest department principal secretary Vivek Kumar Singh.
Around Rs 1.26 crore would be spent on developing the open gyms at the 10 parks, while around 2.52 lakh would be spent on the maintenance of the parks for five years, said Gopal Singh, the conservator of forest.
"The upcoming open gyms will have sky walkers, leg pressure machine, air walkers, movers among other machines. By May we should be able to start the gyms. A trainer would be provided in each open gym," said Gopal.
He added that fitness freaks would be charged for the open gyms.
"We will issue cards to people who want to use the gyms. People will have to pay a nominal monthly fee. We have not kept the facility free because we have found that people start playing with the fitness equipment once it is available for free. This also increases the risk of instruments getting damaged," said Gopal.
According to officials many have already started using the under-construction open gyms at the few parks. The formal inauguration of the gyms would be done only after installation of all the equipment.
Vibha Kumari, 25, who has started visiting the SK Puri Park under-construction open gym daily, said: "It is good that the government has taken steps to start open gyms. I have been visiting the SK Puri open gym for the past few days though it is yet to be formally inaugurated. Earlier, my friends and I used to go out for jogging but now we make sure to visit the open gym even if we have to wait for a few minutes to use the facility because of the crowd," said BCom student Vibha.
Vibha, who lives in a private hostel on Boring Road, said the reason she chose to visit the open gym at SK Puri Park instead of any private gym was that she was getting limited pocket money from her parents and so she was not in a position to hit a private gym.
