Bhubaneswar: The Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) has engaged the services of Sulabh International to ensure cleanliness around and keeping the toilets user-friendly at five major city parks. The city parks include: Biju Patnaik Park (Forest Park), Indira Gandhi Park, Madhusudan Das Park, Mahatma Gandhi Park and Buddha Jayanati Park.
The plant litters i.e. dry leaves and branches etc would be used as a composting matter to generate organic manure in near future. BDA is investing Rs 4 lakh per month for this cleanliness drive at five parks. Sulabh was selected from a bidding process as it has a proven track record of managing toilets across the city and working for decades in the Temple City to make the surrounding clean.
BDA chief horticulturist (in-charge) Ashokananda Dhar says “the entry points of the five parks, their lawns, pathways for walking and jogging and areas near the Open Air Gyms are now sporting a cleaner look as the dry leaves and other plant-based litters are taken care of by the cleaning team.’’
He also added that to ensure a healthy environment and provide basic services inside all the mega parks toilets are now under the care of Sulabh so that the park goers, mostly during morning and evening hours are getting to use cleaned toilets as well.
It can be mentioned here that the development authority is currently managing over 50 parks across the city. However, these parks are the biggest ones compared to their sizes. While the Biju Patnaik Park is of 22 acres, Indira Gandhi Park is of 11 acres, Madhusudan Das Park 30 acres, Mahatma Gandhi Park 5 acres and Buddha Jayanti Park 23 acres of area, making the management of the plant litters a great challenge. In fact, BDA is planning to start a bio-composting work at major park sites with scientific know-how in near future.
Cuttently for the cleaning work there is no fixed number of staff deployed at one park location. For example the Biju Patnaik Park being the oldest and huge the litter is more and there more deployment is needed compared to a park like Mahatma Gandhi Park, so the agency shuffles its resources as per the needs of the day-to-day demand.
The Chief Horticulturist also urged the park goers to stop taking non-biodegradable things inside the parks as it would add to the problems of the agency to keep the environment in order. “Responsible people and Smart Citizens should contribute their share of environment friendliness to keep the green patches of the city free from non-biodegradable things,’’ he added.
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