BMC has more than 28K vacancies
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has more than 28,000 posts vacant and is facing a big manpower crunch to tackle problems like potholes, drainage, garbage and water supply. This has come to light only a day after a study showed that the civic body had been bombarded with large number of complaints on these important issues. Basic civic services like cleanliness, water supply and health are getting affected due to the vacancy of these posts.
According to civic officials, of the 1.4-lakh BMC employee strength, as many as 28,661 posts are vacant. This is more than 20 per cent of the total strength, which is a substantial figure considering that civic workers are engaged in solving citizen’s problems on a daily basis.
Among the vacancies, 18,843 posts are awaiting new recruitments, while 9,818 posts are due for promotions.
Alarmingly, most of these vacancies are from the C and D class categories, the employees of which are mainly responsible for dealing with civic issues. In the C class, which has posts like nurses, clerks, assistants, there are 8,589 posts vacant and 1,372 are due for promotions. The 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 are pending for promotions.
Chief labour officer Prabhakar Satpute said, “As per the civic guidelines, the BMC is in the process of filling up these vacancies at the earliest. Recently, we had recruitments for the posts of security guards and nurses.”
However, he refused to comment on how much time it would take to fill up all these posts. “Its not a time-bound programme. While recruitment is on, many civic officials get retired and new posts are created. So it’s a continuous process,” he added.
A study by an NGO 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 agreed that large number of vacancies in these departments is proving to be the biggest hurdle for the BMC to resolve these complaints.
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