The Hindu 04.04.2013
Staff shortage hits execution of corporation’s works
In the past few weeks, ever since G. Latha assumed
office as Commissioner, Coimbatore Corporation, the civic body came up
with a slew of announcements. The announcements followed series of
review meetings she held with various department officials. The field
staff were asked to supervise public toilet maintenance, ensure faulty
street lights were repaired at the earliest, complaints were attended to
at the earliest, etc.
The public welcomed the
announcements and so did the officials. But the latter say for the
Commissioner’s instructions to be carried out in the right earnest, the
staff strength has to be increased.
On condition of
anonymity, engineering wing staff says that with minimum staff it will
be difficult to deliver service at the quality the Commissioner expects.
And for a sustained period at that.
They point out
that as against the norm of having an assistant or a junior engineer for
a ward, the Corporation has only 20 or so engineers, who, given the
strength, are burdened with five or more wards each.
The
field engineers will have to take care of water supply, drain
construction, street light maintenance, return office in the afternoons
to work as draughtsman and do much more like also attending to
faults/complaints.
There are not enough engineers at
the supervisory cadre as well. For a civic body like Corporation, which
manages five water supply schemes — Pilloor I and II, Aliyar, Siruvani
and Bhavani the number of engineers is grossly inadequate.
Likewise,
to maintain over 60,000 street lights, the Corporation has no
electrical engineer. Only recently the City Engineer retired.
The
sources regret that even as the existing engineers go on retirement,
the Corporation seems to be doing little to get the State Government’s
nod for having more sanctioned posts and filling up the same. In January
last year, a little over a year ago, the Council passed a resolution
asking for superintending engineers, environment officer, executive
engineers, urban health nurses, bill collectors, security and much more.
They
point out that there was an urgent need for the Corporation to get more
sanctioned posts and fill up those and also vacancies because the area
has increased from 105 sq.km to over 250 sq.km and so has the number of
households.
Adding strength to their demand is the
civic body’s financial position. Even if the posts were to be created
and staff appointed, the over-all expenditure towards salary will be
well within the norms, they add.
Senior officials say
that they are aware of the issue and have reminded the Government in
this regard. Until such time, they will focus on efficient use of
manpower of privatising work like solid waste management.
