Berhampur: Residents of Laxminarayan Nagar area in Ankuli mouza under Ward no-40 of Berhampur Municipal Corporation (BeMC) limits Friday expressed resentment over a newly-constructed children’s park too close to a cemetery.
Construction work of the park was earlier stalled for a long time in the wake of Covid-19 outbreak, which has been completed recently.
A source said that the Berhampur Development Authority (BeDA) has been carrying out construction of new parks at available open spaces in different wards within the civic area. Existing children’s parks in some of the wards were previously restored and repaired, while some are still underway.
However, the opening of a park near a cemetery is terrifying, locals opined.
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“Children and elderly persons dislike going to the park as it is located in the close vicinity of a cremation ground. We had opposed when the construction work started and most of the residents are not going there since the day when it was opened for public,” a number of locals rued.
Cremation of bodies is often done and ten-day rituals (Dasaha) are performed at the cemetery. The discarded materials like clothes, flowers, mats, green coconut shells, earthen pots and several other objects used in such inauspicious rites are usually seen lying in front of the children’s park, they added.
The BeDA and BeMC authorities do not bother to clean the premises on a regular basis, the residents alleged.
At times, venomous snakes are also seen roaming in the new park premises and children feel scared to play inside. Hence, it should be shifted to another place in the locality, so that, it would be of use to them, the residents opined.
Now, the park with no visitors has turned into a farmland with patch of grasses entirely covering it.
When contacted, BeDA Secretary Sambit Rout said, “Construction, restoration and repair works in many parks were stalled due to the enforcement of codes of conduct during the recent rural and urban elections.”
Local issues and development of the parks will be given priority as soon as the works resume, the senior BeDA official added.
PNN