BMC to manage city parks of less than one acre in size

BHUBANESWAR: The Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) and Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Friday decided that the parks, which are spread over less than one acre, will be managed by the latter. The BDA thus handed over the management of nine more parks to the BMC.
While the BDA will now have 52 parks under its control, the BMC will maintain 71 parks altogether, including the nine handed over to it. This has been done for better upkeep and management, BMC sources revealed.
At present the BMC is maintaining 62 parks out of which 36 have been developed under Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (Amrut).
All the 62 parks are currently being maintained on public-private-partnership (PPP) mode. “Women self-help groups (SHGs), formed under Mission Shakti, have taken maintenance charge of 44 parks while the resident welfare associations maintain 18. Each of this community-managed park gets Rs 10,000 maintenance fee from the BMC every month,” said environment officer Basant Kumar Mallick.
BMC horticulturist Girija Shankar Satapathy said since all the small parks’ management now has been outsourced, the parks with less than an acre area have been given to the BMC management.
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