North MCD to give swimming pools to pvt players

Incurring huge losses in operation and upkeep of swimming pools, the North Delhi Municipal Corporation has announced to give these pools to private players. The Corporation, which runs as many as six swimming pools in its area, has said that the move will help in reviving these pools as they are gathering dust and will help in increasing revenue generation also.

“The North MCD has decided to allot day-to-day operation and maintenance to private bodies so they could run it properly. In return, the cash-strapped agency will get revenue from them. The allotment will be done on a monthly licence fee basis with provision of charge-revision,” said Mohan Bhardwaj, Chairman, Standing Committee.

The civic body accepted that the civic body is not being able to operate its six swimming pools located in Kutcha Bagh, Shalimar Bagh, Prashant Vihar, Rohini Sector-III, Majlis Park and Keshav Puram owing to poor maintenance/repair and lack of publicity. In year 2014-15, the Corporation incurred an expenditure of Rs 9.57 lakh on cleaning-cum-repair/maintenance of these pools and spend lakhs of rupees over salary of staff but generated only Rs 13.31 lakh. The revenue collected from two pools was below Rs 50,000. During the last financial year, owing to financial constraints the works of repair and maintenance could not be undertaken in any of the pools and the agency decided not to operate them.

The officials said that with decision to allot tenders to private partners, the Corporation has fixed Minimum Reserved Monthly Licence Fee of Rs 75,000 while Earnest Money Deposit Security will be of Rs one lakh. With the approval, the Corporation also hiked charges for swimming pool services. The agency hiked membership charge from Rs 10 to Rs 20 per person per month while the daily dip charges was raised to Rs 50 per person per month which was earlier zero. Children of Municipal/government/aided schools will be charged Rs 300 instead of the existing Rs 200. Employees will be charged Rs 500 instead of Rs 300 and others will have to pay Rs 800 in place of Rs 500.