Nagpur News: No major development project can be taken up by NMC (Nagpur Municipal Corporation) without external support. No matter what the project is, work on it doesn’t begin till an advisor is chosen and appointed. This simply means that not a stone can be lifted by the NMC without the approval and advice of a private architectural firm. This practise costs the Corporation crores of rupees every year, for advice. Despite such flow of money, a number of projects are still stuck in the pipeline.
Repeated questions to the Corporation and firms always elicit the same answer- that the project is being worked upon or is in its final stage. These shrugging statements are the most evident output of the Rs. 2, 34, 32, 687 that have been paid to the advisors so far.
An important point to note is that NMC has its own force engineers. A lot of money goes in the upkeep and payments of these engineers, but external advisors are paid for and masqueraded nevertheless. The perception within the corporation is that private advisors have a good amount of expertise while there is much to complain about when it comes to the Corporation’s own engineers.
This is blatantly lax spending of valuable taxpayer money. The NMC continues to increase establishment costs, instead of reducing them, and has added advisor payments as another form of expenditure. This information was received by INTUC (Indian National Trade Union Congress) State Committee Chief Trisharan Sahare through an information officer.
There around 1500 to 1900 vacant posts in NMC at present, and every single officer has additional responsibility thrust upon them. While some of them are struggling under the work pressure, still others have chosen not to work that hard at all. Unless the NMC administration gets its act together soon, serious financial repercussions will have to be faced.
