Railways gardens in sad state

Railways gardens in sad state
Vijay Times

Cook, eat, sleep and litter up the entire place and walk out. This is what most of the passengers and some miscreants have been doing at the gardens of the City Railway Station. Poor maintenance and absence of fencing have resulted in people littering the place and spoiling the beauty of the entire premises.

Passengers waiting for trains as well as outsiders are always found loitering around and sleeping on these lawns most of the time. The railway ministers main focus is on the cleanliness of railway stations this year. Bangalore City station, which boasts the world class station status, is little bothered about its beautification and cleanliness.

The few patches that have been identified to be developed into beautiful gardens are poorly maintained. Though the gardens inside the stations boundary have been maintained well with beautiful lawns and fencing, those outside, especially the garden at the second entry (Okalipuram side), have become a garbage dump. Even though the maintenance of these gardens has been given to private contractors under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) module, they are in a pathetic condition. The funds for maintaining the gardens, which amount to Rs 2.50 per sq ft, are handed over to these contractors every month, but the Railways have never bothered to supervise their work.

Apart from sprinkling water once in a while, there is nothing more that the contractors have been doing.

"The gardens have turned into a filthy place with miscreants entering the station without platform tickets and taking shelter under the tree. They walk out at the end of the day littering the whole place. There is no guard to look after these gardens," says the traffic police on duty at the second entry. "We cannot chase them all the time; this could have been avoided if these gardens were fenced like those inside the premises," he adds.

However, the railway sources say that the gardens inside the station premises are maintained by them and those outside have been handed over to the contractors. But somebody from the railways should supervise their work. A security guard would solve all this problem and that could be again possible in a PPP module, as it would be quite expensive for railways to appoint a guard, sources add.

VViij jaay y TTiimme es stried to contact the railway officials, but none of them was available for comment.