The Times of India              03.08.2013

Civic body spends Rs 10 lakh per month on police services

AURANGABAD: The Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) is spending more than Rs 10 lakh every month on a team of 28 policemen it has deployed for assisting the civic body during anti-encroachment drives. However, highly placed sources in the AMC said the policemen had no work when no such drives were held.

A senior civic body official said that the police force was needed only for 10-12 days in a month. "Since the last one year, we required policemen only during demolishing illegal structures and pulling down buildings as part of the road widening drive. Besides, the police also assisted the civic officials during sealing of commercial properties," he said.

Justifying the requirement of police on a regular basis, Shivaji Zanzan, chief fire officer and tax collection in charge in AMC, said on Friday that the police had been playing a vital role in the drives. "They also help us during tax collection drives. We need them badly during the last quarter of the financial year when the civic body aggressively plans tax collection," he said.

Zanzan said that six policemen were recently assigned to six municipal wards in the city to assist the officials during anti-encroachment drives. "We are now planning to collect property tax and to make it a big success, we need the police," he said.

He said hiring policemen on specific days was a time killing activity as it involved heavy expenditure. "We used to do it for years, but later the state government allowed us to deploy them on a regular basis," he said.

Earlier, the civic body used to deploy police constables in the nuisance detection squads of the AMC established to penalise those who throw garbage on city roads. However, non-payment of rent of the vehicles used by the squads has forced the authorities to keep the project on hold for the past few months.

The civic body is already struggling on the financial front. It is not only delaying payments of several private contractors but also postponing the salaries of its employees. Besides, the civic body had witnessed a fiscal deficit of Rs 250 crore in the last financial budget.