Visitors to five major parks in the city would very soon enjoy the benefits of open air gym where they would avail the services free of cost.
The work for this has already started, and `2.5 crore would be spent on the IG Park, Unit-8 Park, Harekrushna Mahtab Park near the BJB College, Dharma Vihar Park and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Park near Satsang Vihar.
Fitness freaks can visit the parks during the working hours. The parks would have 12 fitness equipments to be installed at a cost of `48 lakh at each centre.
The parks would have exercise machines like air walker, sit-up bench, air swing, twisters, glider, push-and-pull-up chair, knee/hip raise on parallel bar, big shoulder wheel, spinner, dumbbell fitting bench, weightlifting flat bench and weightlifting fixed pole, among others.
The instruments would be fitted in such a way that no instructor would be needed for exercising.
There are plans to equip more parks with such exercising machines.
Earlier in the city, the Buddha Jayanti Park at Niladri Vihar, the Guru Kelucharan Park, the Madhusudan Park at Pokariput and the Kharavel Park at Khandagiri have been equipped with open air gyms. Since no protection has been provided for the vagaries of weather, the equipments have been exposed to decay, resulting in rusting of parts.
There is, therefore, a demand for roofing over the equipments.