Residents of many areas are deprived of the pleasure that a flowing fountain gives, due to the civic body's apathy in maintaining these water-spouting delights.
Along with ice-cream, cane juice and ice-gola, the gushing of water at cross roads makes Ahmedabad's blistering summer bearable and even cool at certain times of the day.
However, residents of many areas in the city are deprived of the pleasure that a flowing fountain gives, thanks to the civic body's apathy in maintaining these water-spouting delights.
The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation's recreation, culture and heritage committee's decision to decentralise the maintenance of the city's fountains has failed to produce the desired effect. As a result, around 50% of the fountains in the city are not functioning, after the responsibility of maintaining them was passed on to the light department in each zone of the city.
There are some 100 fountains located in various areas of the city. "Half of these are out of order," said Liyakat Ghori, member of AMC's culture and heritage committee. He said that the committee had raised this issue at the committee's last meeting, but was not given a satisfactory answer.
"Though the work is decentralised, information about proper maintenance of the fountains must be made available at the committee level," he said.
Fountains at Gomtipur and Khokhra Circle, for example, have been not functioning for a long time and repeated complaints have not solved the problem. "We have only one - non-functioning -- fountain in our ward and people here are very disappointed," said Iqbal Sheikh, Gomtipur corporator. He said that numerous complaints made in this regard have failed to produce a result.
Mukesh Krishnachari, resident of Khokhra, said that the fountain at Khokhara Circle works only when the chief minister Narendra Modi visits his office which is located in this area. "The fountain was built three years back and it remained functional regularly only for three months," he said.
In the case of Bhuyangdev Cross Roads in the new west zone, the civic body removed the fountain. It was built by the Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority, but when the civic body took charge of the area, it removed the fountain as it was believed to be obstructing traffic.
Ramaben Joshi, chairperson of AMC's recreation, culture and heritage committee, said that the committee had no centralised data of the non-functional fountains in the city. "We have asked the additional city engineer of the each zone to submit the data about maintenance of fountains at the next committee meeting," she said.
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