Who will take care of Bremen Circle ?

Pune Mirror; Neelambari Bhoge; Wednesday, September 29, 2010;

An RTI filed to reveal who is responsible for maintaining the Bremen Circle shows a confused ownership

The Bremen Circle, built on the University Road on the way to Aundh, has been left with no official owner at present.

Datta Saaykar, a city Right to Information activist filed an RTI to retrieve some information about the Bremen Circle.

“I realised that the fountain at the Bremen Circle has not been functional for a very long time. I thought of sorting out this issue through RTI. I was curious as to who the concerned authority is, so I filed an RTI.”

On June 21, Saaykar filed an RTI through which he asked several questions like — how much money has been spent on Bremen Circle? Since the inauguration, how long has it been in a working condition?

Presently the fountain is not working, so who has taken up the responsibilty to fix it? And lastly, who is responsible for the fountain?

Datta further added, “Water has accumulated around the fountain, which might breed mosquitoes and in turn further lead to various diseases. Our only objective behind the RTI was to find out who is responsible for this?”

While Datta received answers to his queries, they were not satisfactory, which prompted him to personally meet with the concerned officials for further procedures. He received a copy of the original contract made by the builders.

Mirror got in touch with PMC’s executive engineer of the Garden department Aniruddha Pavaskar, who said, “Bremen Circle was built around 1997 and 1998. It was built by the Dadhe builders, who took care of the fountain thoroughly.

This fountain is the landmark indicating that Pune and Bremen are sister cities. After the Dadhes, Girme Builders took on the responsiblity for a quite a long time.

After they quit, PMC's Garden department was looking after it, when Kumar Builders approached us for it’s maintenance. The agreement between PMC and Kumar builders has been done successfully but not yet executed.

We have sent them a notification regarding the agreement. If we do not get a reply, then we will terminate the agreement and PMC's Garden department will continue to look after it.”