Karachi: Parks in Gulberg Town in a shambles

[Naveed Yaseen]

By Waqar Bhatti
Citizens of Gulberg Town are suffering due to the poor maintenance and dilapidated condition of recreational places in their area.

The town, which has the distinction of having the most number of parks and playgrounds in one locality across Pakistan, boasts approximately 92 parks in addition to several playgrounds. Over the last one and a half years however, most parks in all eight union councils (UC) are in a very bad shape and require the immediate attention of the town administration.

Smaller parks in various UCs of the town, which have been spared from encroaches or are not being used for marriage and other ceremonies, are turning into pieces of barren lands with no grass, broken swings and having no recreational facilities for area people.

Gulberg Town UC 8, which has fewer parks as compared to other UCs of the town, is suffering the most owing to the negligence of town administration. One half of the biggest park in the said UC, Bagh-e-Saman, is being used for marriage ceremonies; the park is in very poor shape and needs immediate attention. Despite being declared a family park only, families rarely visit it.

Similarly, a detailed survey of various UCs in Gulberg town revealed that the majority of smaller parks are in a bad shape and children prefer to play on the streets instead of these parks. Parks in Dastagir society, located around Javed Nehari and adjoining areas, were also showing the neglect of local administration in their maintenance. Locals claim that they have drawn the attention of their UC and town administration towards this issue but no action has been taken by them.

Dr Asif, a social worker hailing from the area, said that the town administration was neglecting providing recreational facilities to local people - the town administration was neither developing any new recreational facility for locals nor maintaining the existing ones. “Some of the parks have been encroached upon by workers of the ruling party by establishing their unit and sector offices in them; one of them is in the custody of Rangers in UC 6 and some of them have are used for marriage ceremonies and thus out of bound for local people and children” he claimed.

He further claimed that the remaining parks were in such poor shape that families of the area had started going to other areas of the city, especially to parks developed by the CDGK or cantonments boards, as recreational facilities in their own area were fast diminishing.

The social worker further said that the town administration needs to establish a water reservoir in each park for grass and plants, put their garden department on alert and spend a little money on the maintenance of swings in these parks.

“The garden department, which has hundreds of employees, is doing nothing as their employees are working privately but drawing salaries from the town,” he complained.

During investigation, it was learnt that the Gulberg Town Administration had issued tenders for maintenance and development of all its parks in all its eight UCs in 2008, but these tenders were neither issued nor was the required uplift work carried out.

When contacted, Town Municipal Officer (TMO) Latif Lodhi said that a paucity of funds was one of the major reasons for poor condition of parks, as there were scores of parks in the town and their development at one time was not possible.

“We have over 92 smaller and bigger parks in the town in addition to playgrounds and if we develop and maintain all of them at one time, all of our resources are consumed solely on them” he claimed. However, he said, the town administration had done many things to convert parks into excellent recreational facilities for children, including installing models of animals and establishing artificial zoos in most of the parks in the town.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=177675