Hyderabad: The GHMC’s sports complexes do not allow women to take memberships. The sports section of the GHMC website doesn’t provide an option for women to take monthly membership for the sports complexes.
Four of the 10 stadiums listed on the website display the options ‘men’ and ‘kids’ but there is no ‘female’ option, when registering for monthly membership online. These stadiums, however, allow women to book a slot on an hourly basis using the ‘pay and play’ option.
A resident of Chandanagar, Ms Pallavi S., who tried to book for a membership online, said, “It’s pretty unfortunate that there is no option for a playground in my area. Without giving us an option, how would GHMC know that not many women are coming forward? We book for an hour and play, so something is better than nothing.”
The GHMC website shows that there are few places where women can play for nominal rates. While the facility is available for four hours in the morning and about three hours in the evening, there is just one slot available for women between 3 pm and 4 pm.
An administrator at the Chandanagar PJR Stadium said, “We do not offer membership for women as there is lack of response. The court is open from 3 pm to 4 pm for women every day”.
A resident of Begumpet, Ms Aurelia D’mello, said, “I had tried to apply for a membership for playing badminton in a stadium which is close to my home sometime ago. They said they don’t give women membership. Unless there is an option available, how can people be certain that there is lack of response from women,” she asked.
Mentioning Sania Mirza and P.V. Sindhu, she said, “By not providing an option for female membership, we might be missing out on several champions.”
Online booking started late in 2016 and nothing seems to have changed since then.
One of the guidelines reads, “GHMC has the right to accept or reject any application without giving any reasons”. For the remaining six stadiums, the page initially displayed an error asking people to select all fields, without displaying them. The error was soon resolved.
