The Times of India     27.08.2012

Staff shortage cripples Belgaum civic body

BELGAUM: The Belgaum City Corporation (BCC) has no superintendent engineer, no demolition squad, no veterinary officer, no permanent legal adviser, no revenue officer, no draughtsman, no food inspectors. The list is endless. The civic body requires 1,725 permanent staffers but it has only less than half the people - 804 to be precise -on the job. The rest of the posts have been lying vacant for the past decade. Reason why the civic body is one of the busiest, with employees turning up for work even on Sundays to finish the backlog of work. However, BCC commissioner Priyanka Mary Francis says the problem will be sorted out soon. According to the Cadre and Recruitment rule of 2011, Belgaum City Corporation should have eight assistant executive engineers, 32 assistant engineers and junior engineers, and four city engineers but now it has just four AEEs, 8 AE/JE and a city engineer.

The corporation is functioning without a superintendent engineer, council secretary, assistant commissioner, revenue officer, draughtsman, permanent legal adviser, council secretary, accounts officer, public relations officer, zonal commissioners, veterinary officer, assistant engineers in UGD and water and sanitation, survey supervisor, accountant, food inspectors and no burial ground watchman. For over a decade, many posts have been lying vacant. Among 1,725 permanent posts, it has just filled 804 posts. Apart from those vacancies filled on compassionate grounds, no fresh recruitment has been made since 2005-06. Even those were only to fill backlogs. For nearly ten years, the corporation is yet to take up general recruitment.

Due to this, some of the staffers are holding additional responsibilities other than the job allotted to them, which in turn is affecting administrative work. Some of the staffers have been working overtime but without any pay to meet the demands of the people. The corporation has been working without corporators for nearly ten months now after the state government superseded it. This has put more pressure on the staff. Officials have been trying hard to meet the public demand, with many of them unable to take leave and even coming to office on Sundays to finish pending work.

With no special squad for demolition, the onus is on other staffers in the corporation. The staff shortage has had an adverse impact on administration, a point conceded by BCC commissioner Francis.

"There is no doubt we have been facing staff shortage for the past many years. This was brought to the notice of the urban development secretary and the process for filling up the vacancies is going on and in days to come these vacancies will be filled," she said.