A sanitation supervisor of the Panvel Municipal Corporation (PMC) was suspended on Wednesday after he was found making proxy entries of workers to pocket half their earnings.
The supervisor, Divesh Sawant, is attached to the civic Solid Waste Management Department and is responsible for maintaining a muster of workers outsourced via a private firm called Sai Ganesh and for getting the work done.
Mr. Sawant colluded with the supervisor of Sai Ganesh to mark most of the workers present and get the firm’s payment cleared for a 50% kickback, a PMC official said.
“Sai Ganesh learnt about the malpractice and removed their supervisor and informed us. Due to the lockdown, most workers were absent and yet the muster had maximum attendance, which raised the firm’s suspicion. We carried out an internal inquiry and found that Mr. Sawant had been cheating the PMC for quite some time. He has been suspended with immediate effect and a departmental enquiry has been initiated,” deputy municipal commissioner Jamir Lengarekar said.