Residents join hands for facelift to park

Alkapur Colony: Vexed with official apathy to their issues, the residents of Alkapur Colony joined hands to take up development of their local park.

Cutting across ages, around 200 residents came together to launch the Swachh campaign. They decided to do the job on their own. The took up 'paint the park' activity conducted by the Alkapur Township Residents Forum (ATRF).

Manoj Kumar, who is heading the ATRF, said, "We have been requesting officials for facelift of our colony park for two years and as we are fed up with lack of response, we decided to make an initiative ourselves. This is one out of 11 colony parks in the Alkapur Township and we want to make it number one." As many as 50,000 residents are living in around 3000 flats and 200 apartments. Alkapuri Township Forum collected around Rs 10,000 to develop Colony Park. 

They hired a JCB and layered the park well by cutting down the grown bushes. It took two days for them to clean and layer the surface. Then it was followed with 'paint the park' activity. The activity gave a beautiful to the participants with 'little soldiers' of the colony painting the wall. "Municipal authorities also have come forward to support us and they promised to turn this park clean and green by providing basic amenities like footpath and sitting benches," Manoj Kumar added.

People stopped visiting the park which was covered with bushes and strewn garbage around. The society members joined hands to clean it and beautify it. Some time ago, the land was under litigation. Even now some political leaders are eyeing on. "With several struggles we have finally reached this stage," said Srikant Swamy, another resident and member of ATRF.

After cleaning the park we are planning to set up benches and some playing equipment for the children, said Shankar Dev of same group."Several times we have complained to GHMC about cleaning and developing the park, but no action was taken. Especially, our kids were forced to play at home. So we have planned to do it by our own," said Naveen Kumar, another resident.