Amid lockdown, standing panel meet today

Proshun Chakraborty | TNN | May 5, 2020, 04:10 IST

Nagpur: Amid the nationwide lockdown, the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) standing committee has convened a meeting on Tuesday.
Unable to manage services of fire tenders with handful drivers, the NMC’s fire and emergency services department has sought standing committee’s permission to avail services of the department’s retired drivers.
The department, which is already facing severe manpower crisis, is battling odds to operate 10 fire tenders deployed across the city for spraying sodium hydrochloride for sanitization purposes. The department has 42 vacant posts of drivers and it is managing nine fire stations with 63 drivers.
Now, it has submitted a proposal to appoint 11 retired drivers on contract basis for 11 months.
Apart from this, the civic administration will also table five proposals before the panel and they included purchase of hydraulic platform and its maintenance for five years, appointing auditor, extension to six contractual engineers on monthly honorarium basis, extension to project consultant for Nag river pollution abatement project and auction of material seized by property tax department.
Congress corporators, however, termed the standing committee chairman Vijay Zalke’s decision of convening the meeting violation of Section 144, which prohibits assembly of four or more people in an area. The standing panel has a total strength of 16 and BJP has 13 members.
“At a time when the entire nation is observing lockdown and political parties appealing people to stay indoors, how can they call a meeting? The police should take action,” demanded the corporators.