Hubballi-Dharwad Municipal Corporation starts recruiting health inspectors

HUBBALLI: The Hubballi-Dharwad Municipal Corporation (HDMC) has conducted a walk-in interview for the health inspector’s post on a contract basis.
The health department of HDMC has received over 200 applications and started the interview process by sorting out applications in a 1:3 ratio. The HDMC is planning to invite eligible shortlisted candidates for interview within a week.
Dr Sridhar Dandappanavar, the health officer at HDMC, said that with the intention of filling vacant posts of health inspectors, “we have invited applications from the eligible candidates, for which more than 200 applications have been received. We were expecting hardly 60-70 applications, but received a big response. In a week an interview will be conducted,” he said.
According to sources in the HDMC, the actual strength of the health inspectors is 51, of which 25 are government appointed, 8 were working on contracts and nine were working on honorarium. The remaining posts were vacant from the past few years.
After the wards increased to 82, the demand for health inspectors rose and many corporators raised the issue of the shortage of health inspectors in their wards. Yielding to pressure from the corporators, the officials have initiated the recruitment on a contract basis, sources said.
In a general body meeting of the HDMC, Veeranna Savadi, a former mayor and senior corporator of the ruling BJP, spoke about cleaning and shortage of staff, mainly health inspectors, to which almost all corporators added their voice, sources added.
Savadi said there was a need for 82 health inspectors and 12 environmental engineers to conduct proper monitoring of cleaning along with adequate pourkarmikas.
Currently, there is a shortage of pourkarmikas, environmental engineers and health inspectors.
“The civic authorities trying to fill sanctioned posts first. But the authorities should ensure adequate pourkarmikas, environmental engineers and also health inspectors,” he added.