Citizen Connect Chennai: Median parks add green space on Chennai roads, but many need attention

CHENNAI: With the motive of beautifying the city roads and for increasing the green cover, the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) has been allowing private parties to adopt the road median. The parties can advertise themselves by placing billboards on the median to compensate for planting saplings and maintaining the stretch.

However, the road median in New Avadi Road and at the Madras-Tiruvallur High (MTH) Road are the least maintained. At this particular stretch, even the steel arches are missing.

Speaking to DT Next, Deepa, a social activist and a resident of Ayanavaram said, “We have been working on increasing the green cover across the city. And, for this, we have been planting saplings by procuring corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds. Hence, during such works, we noticed that the road median in these areas is poorly maintained.”

Deepa further went on to ask which department is responsible for maintaining these medians as it is mostly left unattended in the particular areas and also across several areas of the city.

Commenting on this a GCC staff said, “We recently informed the concerned party to plant saplings and to maintain it properly. However, they have not adhered to the task yet. Also, there were instances where some miscreants uprooted the barricade from the median. We have also replaced that.”

The staff further went on to say that the GCC usually allows third parties to adopt such space on the road median, where they have to maintain the stretch by planting, pruning and watering and also place their advertisement materials.

“Adoption of such sorts is usually given for two years. But, the space is seldom maintained. Also, there are discussions on charging these parties for allowing them to advertise so that GCC can also incur revenue,” the staff said.