Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation’s engineering workers repair street lights in the capital. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, May 2: Shortage of manpower threatens to cripple the administrative system of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC).

Sources said that the BMC’s engineering wing has just five assistant engineers against its requirement of 13. Similarly, it has only 12 junior engineers against the sanctioned strength of 39.

“There are 60 wards in the corporation. Even if one junior engineer is assigned the charge of two wards, we will need 30 junior engineers. But we have only 12 junior enginners, which means one engineer has to take care of five wards. Besides, we need more junior electrical engineers because a lot of electrical work is going on in the city,” said a senior engineer of the corporation.

Sources said even keeping the bare minimum requirements in mind, the BMC ought to have 14 junior engineers in the civil branch, two in electrical and one in mechanical.

“Going by statistics, it would not be difficult for one to imagine how we are coping,” said an engineer, adding that their workload had increased significantly with the engineering wing’s annual expenditure going up to Rs 125 crore. Though assistant engineers generally prepare estimates and also take care of the process of floating and monitoring of tenders, the job is presently being done by executive engineers because of staff shortage.

Though building plans, including the drainage and sewerage plans, are supposed to be approved by the BMC’s plan approval cell before such proposals are sent to the Bhubaneswar Development Authority, this too is being done by the BMC engineers.

On being contacted, deputy municipal commissioner Priyadarshi Mohapatra admitted that there was a shortage of junior engineers. But she maintained that other staff strength in the engineering section was normal. “We know the problem in basic engineering cadre and for that the urban local body is going to hire more junior engineers through a private placement company. A tender process for this has already started. We are also hiring stenographers and data entry operators through the outsourcing root as it has become the policy of the state government for recruitment,’’ she added.

Sources in the corporation said: “Apart from this, the corporation is also managing many wings with various types of contractual employees. They will be trained and motivated through reorientation programmes as many permanent employees are going to retire within two to three years.’’ But on engaging contractual junior engineers in the engineering wing of the BMC, senior engineers observed that for these positions, one has to get either young hands or retired ones. But time was required to train a young hand, and the current team of permanent engineers had no time for imparting training.

However, another senior engineer said: “It is better to spare some time to train a young person as he or she can grasp quickly. But if the authorities hire retired persons with no exposure to municipality or corporation works, it might become a disaster. The best solution to this will be in introducing the proposed engineering cadre in the BMC administration as soon as possible.’’

Housing and urban development minister Badri Narayan Patra earlier told The Telegraph: “Not only for engineering section, but for all the municipal administration in different wings across the state, there is a proposal under consideration by the government to introduce a municipal administration cadre. But it will take some time to actualise.’’