IT wing of MC plagued by staff shortage
Even after the Fourth Delhi Finance Commission report rapped the municipal corporation for not using modern information technology, resulting in severely limiting the revenue potential, the mandarins in the administration seem to have buried their heads in the sand and have been ignoring the issue.
Even after the Fourth Delhi Finance Commission report rapped the municipal corporation for not using modern information technology, resulting in severely limiting the revenue potential, the mandarins in the administration seem to have buried their heads in the sand and have been ignoring the issue.
The critical factor that they have been ignoring is staff shortage with only three employees — a computer programmer, a clerk and a data entry operator — that too on contract, who are managing around 20 projects of the civic body.
This key drawback has led to delay in execution or abandoning of several proposals mooted a year ago like taking the process for birth and death certificates online.
The project for online water bills enuring a state-of-the-art Management Information System (MIS) for sanitation are also hanging fire.
Online system crashes frequently
In August 2013, the MC started an online system to check water bills and send SMS alerts to city residents, but after three months only, the system reportedly crashed.
The civic body decided to prepare its own software, but till date nothing has been done so far.
For the past 10 months, the complaint centre having telephone numbers 0172-5009333, 5009444, 5009555, are not functional as there is not staff.
In December 2012, the MC launched online grievance system for the public to register their complains by either logging on the site mcchandigarh.nic.in or by osd_mcc@chdut.nic.in., but the system has failed to be use with regular complaints from residents of problems getting un attended.
MC additional commissioner Sunil Bhatia said, “We are in the process of finalising pending IT projects and are hopeful that, by end of this year, these will be completed.”
When contacted, Mahesh Gandhi, the computer programmer at MC, said, “We are short of staff and have requested the authorities to plug the manpower gap. It is under process and will be provided soon.”
