Uday Tekale, assistant commissioner and chief of administration
department, said, “There are a total of 7,500 employees and officials
working in 27 major departments of the civic body. It is for the first
time that staff rationalization is being done here. It has been found
that there are some departments whose workload has increased over the
years but the number of employees has remained the same. As a result,
they fail to provide better services to citizens. At the same time,
there are some departments that have excess staff.”

Tekale said
the rationalization process began a week back. Information is sought
from each department about the number of sanctioned posts, posts filled,
additional employees needed or the additional employees they have.
“This will give us the exact number of departments that are facing
manpower shortage and the number of employees or officials required by
them. A plan will be prepared to reallocate the staff once the
rationalization process ends,” said Tekale.

The civic administration
will submit a report to the municipal commissioner in a fortnight. A
civic official said that if any civic department is found short of staff
even after the rationalization process, the civic body will have to
create new posts and recruit staff. This will require permission from
the state government.

The state government has replaced octroi with the Local Body Tax
(LBT). The new department has an excess of 110 employees. The civic
administration has completed the process of reallocation of the excess
staffers to other departments, Tekale said.