City gardens to get facelift with new equipment, claims NMMC

Navi Mumbai The rundown condition of the equipment in the play area within the civic gardens is soon to undergo a facelift

Navi Mumbai The rundown condition of the equipment in the play area within the civic gardens is soon to undergo a facelift. Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation’s (NMMC) garden department has invited tender bids worth ₹50 lakhs to repair the play equipment across all civic gardens.

City gardens to get facelift with new equipment, claims NMMC

There are a total of 182 gardens covering an area of 7.62 sq meter within NMMC jurisdiction.

Residents have been repeatedly voicing their concern about the dangers that the badly-maintained play equipment could pose to children.

“There will be a steady flow of visitors to the gardens with the rainy season coming to an end. We have been persistently asking the administration to undertake repair work and place better quality play equipment. Due to lack of regular maintenance, most equipment is damaged and rusted. There is always a fear that kids playing on the equipment could get injured,” said Netra Shirke, former corporator of Nerul ward.

The ward represented by the corporator has a total of six gardens, and two of these are frequented by families primarily for the different kinds of play equipment that are installed.

“There are three big gardens in Airoli and equipment in each of these are in bad condition. The garden department hardly pays attention to purchasing better quality products, instead they keep floating tenders for repair work wherein the accountability of the contractor is merely for one year,” Airoli resident, Arvind Mane, said.

Six months ago, garden officers had undertaken a survey to ascertain the quality of the equipment in each of these gardens. Within Vashi node alone, the administration identified nearly ₹15 lakh worth repair work to be undertaken.

“There are 30-odd gardens within the node. After the survey we identified around 65-odd equipment that require extensive repair work, whereas 20-odd equipment will have to be permanently removed and disposed of,” said an official from the department.

The department is planning to float fresh tenders to replace the ones that will be removed from the garden area.