Beautiful Capital to beastly Delhi

Upkeep of the streetscaping carried out before the Commonwealth Games is turning out to be a Herculean job for the civic agencies. They have clearly failed in maintaining the multi-coloured pavements, upscale toilet complexes, high-end streetlights, dustbins and the rest of the paraphernalia.

Upkeep of the streetscaping carried out before the Commonwealth Games is turning out to be a Herculean job for the civic agencies. They have clearly failed in maintaining the multi-coloured pavements, upscale toilet complexes, high-end streetlights, dustbins and the rest of the paraphernalia.

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The Delhi government had also constituted a team headed by the chief secretary to devise plans to maintain the accessories and street furniture that had been installed before the Games. But not much work has been done under that too. The Bus-Q shelters, which were constructed before the Games, are not being maintained by any private firm at the moment. “Street furniture were installed under the public-private partnership (PPC) model. The civic agencies have to ensure that private concessionaires are maintaining them properly. As far as the Bus-Q shelters are concerned, the private firm which was supposed to maintain them has backed out. So, we are looking for a new company to look after them,” said P K Tripathi, chief secretary of Delhi.

What is more worrisome is the fact that the warranty cover for the streetscaping carried out by the private firms is only for a year. Any form of replacement or repair work will have to be done by the civic agencies at their own cost after that. Unhappy with the maintenance of waterless urinals, the civic agency had cancelled the contract to the private firm.

“They were not maintaining them properly and we cancelled their contracts. But then they approached the court, which has granted them a stay,” said Yogender Chandolia, chairman of the Standing Committee of the MCD.