Congress general secretary Ajay Maken on Friday urged Delhi Lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung to direct all schools who have received land from the Delhi Development Authority to open their playgrounds for children during non-school hours.
In a letter submitted to the L-G on Friday, Mr. Maken said that given the crunch of open spaces in the city, schools should extend their facilities to all children living within a radius of three kilometres.
Referring to his earlier letter written to Urban Development Minister Kamal Nath two years ago, the New Delhi Lok Sabha MP wrote: “As the Union Sports Minister, I had proposed back then that since the DDA had given land to many schools at extremely low rates, the beneficiaries should allow the playfields’ portions to be used by local children during the non-school hours.”
The Congress leader added that even within the schools, the space for playgrounds entailed an even lesser charge in comparison to the school building. While land for the school building is allotted on perpetual lease at relatively much higher payable cost, the land for playfield is allotted on temporary basis on the payment of nominal ground rent.
However, despite Mr. Nath issuing instructions to schools for granting this facility in response to his Cabinet colleague’s last letter, certain schools had raised concerns about security in their premises in the event of opening them up for outsiders.
In his latest letter, Mr. Maken said that such concerns could be addressed by involving residents’ welfare associations.
“A mechanism can be put in place wherein the registered RWAs under the Bhagidari scheme are entrusted with the responsibility of identifying beneficiary children in the schools’ vicinity and providing them with access cards,” said the letter.
