Palike drafts town planning staff to tackle garbage menace

Civic agency mobilises manpower to address crisis effectively

The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike has redeployed zonal-level town planning staff to tackle the garbage crisis in the City.

In a circular issued about 15 days ago, Palike Commissioner Rajneesh Goel directed all the eight chief engineers (CEs), who were taking care of town planning at the Palike’s eight zonal offices, not to carry out work related to town planning and focus on the garbage crisis on priority.

Speaking to Deccan Herald, Goel said: “We have decided to draft the CEs and engineers to handle the garbage crisis. Towards this end, it has been decided to decentralise all town planning work to the ward level.”

The decision, which is already being implemented, has provided the Palike additional manpower to address the garbage menace which has embarrassed the City in international fora.

“These are not transfers. I am just changing my field formations so as to have more people working on the garbage problem, which is a top priority now,” Goel said.
He said that he had less than 100 people and a chief engineer for garbage management earlier. Now, after the changes, he has over 400 engineers, more than 12 chief engineers and other personnel dealing with the problem.  Well-placed sources in the Palike said the commissioner has been diverting personnel from other departments also and that the circular relating to town planning may have been issued in order to avail the services of chief engineers for garbage manag1ement.

Final approval

On town planning powers the ward-level officials would have, Goel said: “The assistant executive engineer will be in-charge of town planning at 198 wards. However, the files will eventually have to move through the offices of the chief engineers and joint commissioners for final approval. The idea is to transfer the processing and other formalities out of the zonal offices, so that the services of the CEs can be utilised for waste management,” he said.