Staff crunch in BBMP hits development works in City

Development works in the City have taken a backseat due to shortage of staff in the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP).

The staff crunch is specifically in the civic body’s Engineering, Forest and Animal Husbandry Departments. The Engineering Department has a shortage of 44 engineers (Junior engineers and assistant engineers) while 21 personnel are needed for Animal Husbandry Department, including doctors, maintenance staff for slaughter houses and others. Similarly, the Forest Department has an immediate requirement of 16 staffers.

Joint Director of Animal Husbandry Department K A Nanjappa said the present staffers are overburdened with the work, which in turn, is affecting the functioning of department.
“Naturally when the staff are pressured to multitask due to shortage of staff, the efficiency will come down in programmes, such as implementation of Animal Birth Control (ABC) , monitoring of BBMP slaughter houses and others,” he added.

The officials from BBMP’s Forest Department said that the civic body has to recruit eight range forest officers (RFOs) and eight deputy range officers (DROs). They added that there are no RFOs, who are supposed to be the backbone of the department. “There are no tree planting activities, removal of unwanted trees, inspections happening due to absence of DFOs and RFOs. We are unable to handle the department,” an official said.

Effect on higher officials
The shortage of junior engineers and assistant engineers has affected the higher level officials, such as executive engineers and assistant executive engineers. 

A BBMP official from East zone pointed that a total of six constituencies fall under his zone, but there are just  three junior engineers in his zone. “Each junior engineer handles at least 25 wards  and in their absence, we have to perform their duties, such as visiting wards and BBMP office, overseeing civic works and other related activities. The BBMP should depute at least one junior engineer for each constituency.”

According to sources, there are about 48 junior engineers  and 286 assistant engineers while the sanctioned posts are 87 and 291, respectively. They added that BBMP recruited personnel for the engineering section in 2009 for the last time.

A top BBMP official said that there is a shortage of staff at State government level itself and hence, they are facing difficulty in recruitments. When contacted, Commissioner G Kumar Naik said that he has written a letter to the government to look into the recruitment issue at the earliest.