Closed circuit television cameras are coming in handy to keep employees of the Mangalore City Corporation on a leash. An assistant executive engineer of the Mangalore City Corporation has been served notice after he was spotted at the Durgaparameshwari Temple in Kateel village, a long distance away, 26 kilometres in fact, from where the engineer should have been during office hours on August 2.
The man should have known he would be caught. After all, MCC Commissioner Harish Kumar, who got CCTV cameras installed in the MCC office building, is also the administrator of the temple. Alas, it did not strike him that Dr. Kumar would have ringed the temple, too, with a dozen such cameras. In fact, the video feeds from these cameras go directly to the commissioner’s laptop and smartphone. ‘Big Brother’ likes to keep an eye on what’s happening at the temple.
Worse, when the commissioner’s personal assistant called up the engineer, the latter lied that he was in the MCC office – at precisely the moment that Dr. Kumar was watching him on camera. “The AEE was spotted by the cameras at Kateel temple during office hours. When we asked him, he lied to us. So, I have issued him a notice asking for an explanation,” Dr. Kumar told Deccan Chronicle. Maybe the man just got the motto “Government work is God’s work” – that’s what it says on the walls of the Vidhana Soudha, although no one takes it seriously -- a little mixed up.