NO FRESH HIRINGS BY GHMC ADDS TO PEOPLE’S WOES

The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has been operating with 4,747 qualified staff and 25,000 outsourced staff who were mostly recruited on an outsourcing basis for the city with over one crore population.

The civic body has not recruited staff since 2006 which has resulted in several irregularities and a poor grievance readdressal system.

According a Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation official, the existing staff would not be sufficient to redress the grievances of the citizens. The outsourced staff have been deployed in the sanitation, health, town planning, revenue, IT and engineering departments and do not meet the eligibility criteria.

This apart, the same staff were deployed as booth level officers.

The corporation has about 3,500 vacancies in all wings in the GHMC. The corporation would not be able to provide better governance to the public until the recruitment process is completed. to Union leaders have expressed concern over the future of the state-owned telecom firm Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) as lakhs of employees await their February salaries.

A spokesperson for the department of telecom said that the lapse was due to “technical issues” and confirmed that employees will be paid by Holi (March 20), but union members alleged that the issue was a sign of the tough times looming ahead for the ailing firm. This is reportedly the first time that the company has defaulted on salaries in its 18-year history, as its current debt is belie-ved to stand at `13,000 cr.

Speaking on the issue Mr Thomas John K, president of National Union of BSNL Workers (FNTO), said, “BSNL keeps the pricing low and affordable for the common man without which, prices could soar. It also has the lowest debt among other network service providers such as Airtel, Vodafone and Jio. But it needs fresh funding to stay afloat, which the DoT is not approving.”

He added, “Our fear is that the government is creating a monopoly in the market by supporting companies like Reliance Jio and killing us as competition.