Ahmedabad: Workers absent at 40 pumping stations

AHMEDABAD: On Friday, the new Ahmedabad municipal commissioner M Thennarasan paid a surprise visit to a water pumping station at Helmet Crossroads.
He found that the staff members present there were fewer than what the contractor responsible for operating and maintaining the station had agreed to in the tender.
The commissioner then ordered the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) vigilance department to carry out checks at all 200 water pumping stations in the city. The vigilance department teams found staff missing at 40 pumping stations. The department submitted its report and the AMC has started penalizing the two companies who were given the work.
Sources said the civic body gave contracts for operating and maintaining water and sewage pumping stations to private companies. The tenders specify the number of staff members to be deployed in three shifts.
The civic body pays these companies crores every year.
Sources said the contracts for operation and maintenance of the 40 pumping stations where vigilance teams found staff absent were given to two comapnies, Aqua Gaseous Controls (India) and Mana Techno Engineering.
The civic body has started the process of punitive action against them.
Sources in the vigilance department said these companies only showed staff on paper and were getting paid their salaries but they did not deploy these staffers.
The commissioner also asked city engineer Harpalsinh Zala to strictly monitor manpower at all pumping stations through the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) software on which the civic body has spent crores.
Sources said the civic body spent about Rs 50 crore on the SCADA system that monitors sewage treatment plants and water pumping stations.
All water supply infrastructure has been connected to the SCADA system but due to lack of monitoring, contractors get away with irregularities, sources said.