1 chief engineer for 3 BMC depts; junior staff warn of ‘excess burden’

Sanjay Darade, who was the chief engineer of bridges department, has been given additional charge as chief engineer for roads and traffic as well as SWD departments. The last chief engineer for SWD department retired on May 31 while the last chief engineer for roads and traffic department retired on August 31.

Three of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) most crucial departments — roads and traffic, stormwater drains (SWD) and bridges — will now be led by only one chief engineer. The decision, which has been described as experimental, was taken by civic chief Praveen Pardeshi as he believes this will improve co-ordination between the departments, which otherwise work individually.

Currently all the three departments are involved in monsoon and post-monsoon preparation, while the bridges in the city area are under audit. (HT FILE)

However, the junior staff members from the departments have said this will burden the chief engineer and hamper work as number of deputy engineers posts are also lying vacant.

Since September 4, Sanjay Darade, who was the chief engineer of bridges department, has been given additional charge as chief engineer for roads and traffic as well as SWD departments. The last chief engineer for SWD department retired on May 31 while the last chief engineer for roads and traffic department retired on August 31.

In addition to the absence of a full-time, dedicated chief engineer, two of these departments — bridges and SWD — also do not have a full-time deputy engineer. Each department is supposed to have three deputies — one each for the island city, eastern and western suburbs.

In the bridges department, there has been only one deputy chief engineer handling the post for both island city and eastern suburbs since September 2018. The western suburbs is handled by an executive engineer, who has additional charge of deputy for the western suburbs.

In the SWD department, there has been no full-time deputy chief engineer for three years for the island city. The department has deputy chief engineers for western and eastern suburbs. Currently, the western suburbs deputy chief has been given additional charge of the island city as well.

The roads and traffic department currently has three deputy chief engineers. One of the executive engineers from a department said, “The commissioner recently issued a circular that any delay in work would lead to salary cuts for executive engineers. However, the situation now is that there is only one person handling the three most important departments. As a result, there is excessive work burden and decision-making is being hampered. There is also extra pressure on those handling additional charge of deputy chief engineer.”

Currently all the three departments are involved in monsoon and post-monsoon preparation, while the bridges in the city area are under audit. Besides this, post-monsoon concretisation of roads and attending to pothole complaints is also going on. Post-monsoon, desilting work of the drains will also start from October. Junior engineers believe that all this work will be hampered.

Vijay Singhal, additional municipal commissioner who heads all three departments, said the decision has been taken on an experimental basis. “All the three departments are inter-linked. We are trying this on experimental basis. It’s not because we don’t have an experienced engineer for all departments. This is not a final decision, let’s see how it works,” he said.