Shift to east Delhi? MCD staff not too keen

The civic centre has ‘given a cold shoulder’ to its poor cousin — the east Delhi municipal corporation.

The civic centre has ‘given a cold shoulder’ to its poor cousin — the east Delhi municipal corporation.

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According to MCD officials, employees at the swanky building on the Jawaharlal Nehru Marg in Central Delhi have refused to be shifted out to the east Delhi municipal corporation — the only among three new civic bodies to have its headquarters out of the civic centre.

MCD employees have requested the administration to recruit new employees for east Delhi so that they could stay back at the civic centre, which will be the headquarters of south and north Delhi corporations.

Incidentally, east Delhi will be the poorest of the corporations as it has the maximum number of unauthorised colonies and minimum sources of generating revenues as compared to the other two civic bodies.

"The additional commissioners of MCD have devised a formula for distribution of the staff working at the civic centre but it is finding opposition from employees who have refused to budge," said an MCD official.

He added that since east Delhi is located on the fringes of the city and because civic centre is a 'posh' office, employees are trying their best to stay with the south and north corporations.

"However, the commissioners have ordered that once the list of division of labour is finalised, employees will have to obey," the official added.

The civic body has come up with a formula that will divide the employees in the ratio of 1:1:1/6 among three municipalities — north, south and east. This means that if a department has 26 employees, 10 will work for north, 10 for south and the remaining six for east.

For a smoother transition, the civic body has decided to distribute people according to the proximity of their residence. Six months after the trifurcation is implemented, the system will be streamlined again and employees will be shifted as per the need.

A senior MCD official said to cut down expenses, some posts will be abolished while some new will be created.

The MCD has 16 departments at the headquarters with a total of 12,515 employees.

He added that due to the distribution of employees, work may get affected in several departments.

"Since we have to split the number of employees, work will suffer," he said.

The distribution of employees is being supervised by a committee of MCD officials comprising all six additional commissioners, chief law officer and financial advisor-cum-charted accountant.