Faced with an acute shortage of appointed civic officers responsible for combating illegal structures, BMC
Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal has decided to temporarily elevate some assistant engineers to the executive engineering level. Termed as one-step promotion, the system is already prevalent in the Mumbai police, in the Anti-Corruption Bureau, the state intelligence, the protection branch, and the special branch.
When Chahal joined in May this year as chief of the BMC, he realized that seven positions were vacant from appointed officers. He wanted to encourage them with added pay when he told that assistant engineers were not willing to take up the work. They will then return to their post of an assistant engineer after completing a demolition mission.
Chahal said he found assistant engineers don’t like to work in the area of illegal structures. He said, “They feel it’s risky. When I asked for these posts to be filled, half of them didn’t turn up. They need to be interested in the job. So I have asked deputy municipal commissioner (special engineering) Vinod Chitthore to make a proposal for one-step promotion.”
In response to Chahal’s directive, Chitthore prepared a note that states that there is a tendency amongst officers to get these postings canceled, failing which they resign from the BMC. As per the note, the new step will enable eligible persons to work wholeheartedly for the civic body. The city engineer has also been told to work out a similar proposal.
One of the designated officers who got the job in 2019 said during demolition drives in slums, dwellers curse and abuse. “Phone calls from local politicians to stop demolitions were also a regular feature. I couldn’t sleep and had nightmares of people crying while losing their homes. But I had to do my duty and failure to do it attracted criticism from bosses and courts,” he recounted.
