PANVEL CIVIC BODY TO DEVELOP GARDENS ON 22 PLOTS BY JUNE NEXT YEAR

NAVI MUMBAI: The Panvel City Municipal Corporation (PCMC) has decided to develop gardens on 22 plots with a budget of ₹23Cr. The gardens will be ready for the local residents by June next year, a senior officer said.

These plots are scattered in Kharghar, Kalamboli, Khanda Colony, Kamothe and New Panvel. Earlier, they belonged to the City and Industrial Development Corporation (Cidco), but they transferred the plots to PCMC earlier this year.

The general body of PCMC recently approved the plan of developing gardens on those plots and the budget was allocated soon after that.

Sanjay Katekar, executive engineer (project) of PCMC, said, “With the help of our architects, we are now preparing the designs of the gardens. Separate tenders for each garden will be issued very soon and the work at the sites will be started by October. If everything goes according to our plans, all the gardens will be ready by mid-2022.

“Quite a few neighbourhoods in those areas don’t have any open space and the residents have been complaining about it for a long time. Apart from these 22, Cidco is in the process of transferring 26 other plots in those areas including a few in Taloja, and the transferring formalities will be completed within a few weeks. We will develop gardens, playgrounds, ward offices among others on those plots at a later stage.”

RM Bhosale, a 64-year-old activist from Kamothe, said, “Since these plots have been lying vacant for the past several years, some residents are now using them for dumping garbage. Quite a few plots have turned into breeding grounds for mosquitoes. If PCMC develops gardens on those plots, the existing problems will get solved automatically.”