MUMBAI: The BMC's poor performance in providing basic civic amenities to the city can be attributed to the staff crunch it is facing. There are over 28,000 vacant posts in the civic body. In other words, 20% of the total posts are vacant due to which basic services like cleanliness, water supply and health are getting affected.

According to civic officials, of its total strength of 1.4 lakh employees, 28,661 posts are vacant. Among the vacancies, 18,843 posts are awaiting new recruitments, while 9,818 posts are vacant due to the lack of eligible employees who can be given promotions. Alarmingly, most vacancies are from C and D class categories, the employees of which are mainly responsible for dealing with civic issues. In the C class, which have posts like nurses, clerks and assistants, 8,589 posts are vacant and 1,372 are empty due to lack of suitable candidates. Same goes for D class, in which workers and labourers are from departments like conservancy, roads and health. There are 8,349 vacancies in this category and 3,750 posts due to the lack of eligible employees who can be given promotions.

Chief labour officer Prabhakar Satpute said, "The BMC is in the process of filling up the vacancies at the earliest. Recently, we had recruitments for posts of security guards and nurses."

A study by NGO Praja had shown that the BMC in 2012 received 29,852 citizens' complaints related to roads and potholes, 16,194 on drainage problems, 6,562 on garbage and 6,215 on water supply. Civic officials said it is difficult to resolve these problems due to the vacancies in these departments.