Several parks across Salt Lake are in a dismal state with tall weeds, defunct lights and broken play furniture.
Once popular hangouts for residents and visitors, the parks now resemble mini forests. Most are overrun by weeds and many plunge into darkness after sundown.
The parks are under the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC), which is supposed to cut weeds and maintain lighting systems and play furniture.
The grounds of almost all the parks are covered by creepers and tall weeds. Children’s rides like seesaws, swings and merry-go-rounds lie in tatters. The lights are either defunct or don’t illuminate the whole premise.
The CK-CL park in Salt Lake’s Sector II is not only overrun by weeds but also has several defunct lights.
The park has a children’s section with rides, which lie without maintenance.
The walking track in the park has become slippery because of the accumulation of moss on the paver blocks.
In the EE Block park, several trident lights are broken and most lights became defunct months ago. Some lamp posts had electrical wires sticking out dangerously.
No children were spotted in the AD Block park despite the presence of colourful swings, slides and merry-go-rounds. Reason: none of them works and many are broken.
“The children’s section of the park has at least 10 rides. All of them stopped working because of lack of maintenance,” a resident said.
Untrimmed grass and weeds at CK-CL park
The broken base of a merry-go-round lies hidden under overgrown grass. Visitors can trip over it and get injured. The merry-go-round lies overturned near the wall.
Rusted iron plates and play furniture were spotted at CJ and BJ parks.
Many parks in Salt Lake have a perimeter fencing made of iron nets. In several places, many of these have rusted badly. The fencing is also broken in some places.
A senior BMC official admitted that several parks were in a sorry state because thorough maintenance had not been done in the past several months.
“We have not issued any fresh tenders yet for the maintenance of parks. Many need to be repaired and refurbished at the earliest,” said the official.
Mayor Krishna Chakraborty, however, said the spurt in growth of weeds and foliage was because of the recent showers.
“We will soon start clearing the weeds from the parks. The defunct lights and broken play furniture will be repaired, too,” Chakraborty said.“We intend to finish work before Durga Puja.”
