CHENNAI: Owing to lack of manpower, the city corporation has handed over 554 parks out of 669 in city limits to private contractors for maintenance. A total of 61 contractors have been selected at a total contract value of about Rs. 40 crores.
Out of the remaining parks, the civic body is maintaining 51 by itself and 61 parks have been adopted by local welfare associations, private people and NGOs. Three parks have been temporarily closed.
This comes in the wake of reports on corporation parks having lack of watchmen, alcohol-related issues, bad civic amenities like toilets and benches and dry greenery.
Corporation officials said the civic body has stipulated strict uniform norms for all contractors to abide by in maintaining the park, such as all contract staff must be uniformed with the badge of the company and that watchmen must be aged between 18 to 50.
‘‘Petty crime happens in parks because the watchmen are not there or old enough to act,’’ said a top corporation official. The number of watchmen too vary depending upon the size of the park.
The civic body has also told contractors to be fully equipped with spades, buckets, and all gardening equipment and conduct periodical maintenance on time. ‘‘Pruning, mowing and weeding of shrubs and plants must be carried out once in 15 days depending upon the requirement,'' the official said.
‘‘We have advised the contractors to ensure daily sweeping and cleaning. There are three lawn mowers for the lawn based parks,’’ the official added. Officials have ordered the contractors to fix necessary signboards like working hours to be fixed at the entrance.
The civic body maintains 99 centre medians, 99 traffic island parks and 163 roadside shops. 70 per cent of the park area is earmarked for greenery and 30 per cent is for walking path, yoga area, open gym and children’s play area, said, officials.
‘‘The contractors must strictly abide by all the wage laws of the state government and salaries to all staff must be paid without complaints. Strict action will be taken if the GCC receives any complaints of wage exploitation,’’ the official said.
Apart from this, the corporation has also ordered all contractors to set up three rainwater harvesting structures in small parks and up to 10 rainwater harvesting structures in big parks. Officials have set January end as the deadline. ''If contractors don’t show improvement, their contract will be terminated after few warnings,’’ the official said.