Students secure park upkeep promise

The school students who have been cleaning up Vivekananda Park every weekend for a month have made the CMDA promise that it will start installing a fence and lights on the premises in 45 days and put in place a security and maintenance system in another 15 days.

The youngsters, from Modern High School for Girls, La Martiniere for Boys, MSB Educational Institute and Ricards Lodge High School in London, met the CMDA CEO, Vivek Bharadwaj, and representatives of Calcutta Improvement Trust on Monday to discuss the upkeep of the park.

"The first pillar of the fence shall be erected in 45 days. The lights will be installed concurrently," said Bharadwaj after the hour-long meeting.

"After that, you can extend the gardening, cleaning and security services provided at Rabindra Sarobar to this park as well," Bharadwaj told a CIT official.

The students are happy that they could wake the authorities up from their slumber but cannot understand why it will take a month and a half to start work. "A park in the heart of south Calcutta does not have the amenities that it should always have had and the authorities will take 45 days to get things moving after being alerted. This is unbelievable," said a student who attended the meeting.

Officials of the agency have their excuses ready. "We have to first make an estimate, get it approved, bring out an advertisement in the newspapers, give 14 working days for the bids to be submitted, select the lowest bidder and issue a work order. It is a lengthy process," said an official.

An activist associated with the park clean-up drive pointed out that the iron poles and wire mesh needed for the fencing could be bought from shops and installed in a week.

"Any construction company can provide an estimate in not more than a couple of hours, so what will the agency do for 45 days?" he wondered.

Even the promise was hard won. After the students made a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation on the "small extent" to which they had been able to change the park for the better and how they wanted it to eventually look, the CMDA offered to install bins.

The students declined since the bins could easily be stolen without a fence keeping out "trespassers".