Ipoh council pays long overdue attention to city parks - The Malaysian Insider

BY JERRY FRANCIS

Published: 9 November 2015 7:01 AM

The city council held a gotong royong last Friday to clean up Ipoh Riverfront Park, which the mayor says will be restored to its former condition to serve the community. – The Malaysian Insider pic by Jerry Francis, November 9, 2015.

Ipoh City Council has started to pay attention to the maintenance of its four public parks, following reports that the parks were falling apart from neglect and disuse.

The city council held a gotong royong last Friday to clean up Ipoh Riverfront Park, which had been in decline even after millions of ringgit were spent on its redevelopment in 2005.

Mayor Datuk  Zamri Man said the city council hoped to restore Ipoh Riverfront Park to its original role of family park.

“It is a park for the entire Ipoh community” said Zamri as he planted an ironwood tree (caelalpinia ferrea) in the park during the gotong-royong.

The water features and children’s pool will be mended once maintenance work was complete.

“The work will start as soon as possible and I expect to see improvements by the beginning of next year,” he said.

Zamri said the city council was making an effort to improve the recreation parks for the benefit of the people.

The next gotong-royong would be at D.R. Seenavasagam Park, he said.

In September, The Malaysian Insider reported the city parks’ state of dereliction and disrepair. Community newspaper Ipoh Echo had frontpaged the poorly maintained parks with photographs supporting its claims.

The photographs show decayed gazebos, empty aviaries, broken flowerpots, overgrown undergrowths, defunct fountains and abandoned facilities.

The report states that, over the years, poor maintenance had ”slowly but surely” destroyed the once beautiful Taman D.R. Seenivasagam, Ipoh Riverfront Park, Gunung Lang Recreation Park and Sultan Abdul Aziz Recreation Park.

“It (the poor maintenance) cannot be the result of shortage of funds or manpower. In fact, much money and manpower had been channelled into (the redevelopment and facelifts of) these public parks,” it said.