Chalk out plan to shift Huda staff to MC: Manohar Lal Khattar

PANCHKULA: Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar has asked officials of the Panchkula municipal corporation to work out a proposal if staff from Huda can be transferred to the MC, considering work load.
The Panchkula municipal corporation has been pointing out problem of shortage of staff for past more than a year.

Officials said during a review meeting last month, issue of shortage of staff with the MC was raised and it was proposed that technical advisers should be appointed in the corporation to speed up the development projects.

Referring about various ongoing projects which are in the pipeline and in the process of execution, it was stated by the officials concerned that if a technical adviser was available with the corporation, the ongoing projects could be monitored properly.

It was stated in the meeting that Panchkula MC has a jurisdiction of 893 km, which caters Panchkula, Kalka and Pinjore of horticulture, roads, property tax, citizen charter, marriage registration, birth and death certificate, dog sterilisation, community centre and fire, while Huda is taking care of water and sewerage of Panchkula.

Besides this, horticulture and roads of Sectors 2, 6, 23, 27, 28 and 31 is under Huda jurisdiction. Officials raised an issue in the meeting that as Huda was catering to a lesser area of Panchkula, therefore some of its staff should be transferred to the MC.

Taking note of the issue, the chief minister asked the officials to work out a proposal that if some of the staff of Huda could be transferred to the MC. Out of the total 154 sanctioned posts, 117 posts are lying vacant in the MC.

Officials also pointed out that due to shortage of staff various developmental works, which were proposed nationally and state-level, were being affected. The projects include open-defecation-free areas, swachhta bharat mission, chief minister window, survey of unauthorised colonies and social media grievance tracker.

The work on implementation of IT initiatives of the state government is also not being executed properly as all three posts of assistant manager-IT are lying vacant.

Rajesh Jogpal, administrator-cum-MC commissioner, Panchkula, said the issue of shortage of staff was raised with the authorities concerned number of times in the past. He said in one of his communication, he pointed out that there was no joint commissioner for Kalka and Pinjore, which was under the Panchkula jurisdiction.