50% NMC staff absent during mayor's surprise check

NAGPUR: This was known to citizens for years, but now it is official. Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) staffers are rarely at the workplace during working hours.
Mayor Anil Sole conducted a surprise visit on Monday at 10.30am to check punctuality and attendance of the civic staffers. He visited 14 department and found the average attendance figures of staffers was only 50.18%.The best attendance was at the committee department - which prepares the agenda for NMC meetings. Eighteen out of the nineteen staffers were present.
On the other hand, the absentee figure for accounts and finance department was the highest at 77.77%. Only eight out of 36 staffers were present when Sole visited the section. The public relations department was second worst, with only two out of seven staffers on duty. The other departments with high absenteeism were general administration (60%) and health (65%).
Talking to mediapersons Sole said he had passed on the figures to municipal commissioner Sanjiv Jaiswal. The commissioner had agreed that it was an alarming situation and assured to look into it.
"I have not issued show cause notices to the absent staffers because the numbers are so high. Had the absentees been 5 or 10% we would have considered some action. I have therefore appealed to them not to neglect their duties," he said.
The mayor said that finally it is the employees who have to change their attitude. "Technology does not work. In many offices biometric sensors have been damaged by the employees. They have to change their mentality," he said.
A senior NMC officer admitted that while the civic staffers were supposed to work eight hours a day, but they did not remain present in their workplaces for more than five hours. Coming late is also very common. "The numbers are so high that officers do not dare take action against them. Besides, many officers also come late. Only senior officers come on time because they are summoned by the municipal commissioner frequently. Secondly, many officers are in field for hours and hence they cannot be expected to remain present in office for eight hours," said the officer.