South corpn to check age of workers

In order to identify employees who have already attained the age of retirement but are still on the rolls of the civic body and do not report to work regularly, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation is planning to conduct an ‘age test’ of all group C and D employees. 

Based on the test report, the corporation plans to shortlist the fourth class municipal employees whose real age is more than what is noted on their files and ask them to retire, so that younger employees can be recruited.

Sources in the corporation said age proof was not mandatory when people were recruited to the unified MCD decades ago. Hence, several employees while applying for the class C and D posts reduced their actual age in the application forms at the time of joining.

Now, while their real age has slowed them down, they cannot retire as they are still below 55 on paper.

Don’t report to work

According to a senior leader of the corporation, there are hundreds of employees on the pay rolls who do not report to work regularly.

“There is already a staff crunch. On top of it, some of the employees do not report to work. Therefore, services like sanitation and gardening get affected and the corporation gets a bad name,” the leader said.

The examination would be conducted by a medical board to identify the correct age of the employees and also to certify whether he or she is medically fit.

The group C and D class employees include gardeners, beldars and safai karamcharis. According to a corporation official, there are 2,000 beldars in the unified MCD.

They are supposed to report for work at 6 am, but most of the old timers come late and work gets affected.

“There is already a voluntary retirement scheme in place but such employees are not availing it. We have to conduct tests to determine the age and talk to the workers union on how to improve services of the corporation,” said the official.