All 52 sanitary inspectors shifted to check graft in Chandigarh MC

Days after a sanitary inspector was arrested for graft, the municipal corporation (MC) on Tuesday transferred all 52 sanitary inspectors working with the civic body. 

Of these, 25 are on contract. The performance of regular employees is reviewed every month and that of contactual staff after three months.

The vigilance department had, on August 17, arrested Naresh Kumar while taking ₹2,500 as bribe from a sanitation worker for marking his proxy attendance and stopping his transfer. 

Terming the development “serious”, MC commissioner KK Yadav had said manual checking of sanitary inspectors as well as 3,000 sweepers on the ground was very difficult.

As many as 4,000 global positioning system (GPS)-enabled smart watches to keep tabs on the field staff would be procured soon, he said.

As the arrested official had sought money for marking proxy attendance, watches were expected to do away with this practice, said Yadav.

He said, “The working space of each employee will be marked and attendance recorded once he or she reaches the beat area. Panels in the control room to be set up in the MC office will blink if they move out of this space during duty hours.”  Yadav said the central server would also be alerted if the staffer tried to remove the watch during duty hours.

Several civic bodies were adopting the system to check the misuse of  the manual attendance system and  ensure institutional accountability, he added.

The MC General House had cleared the proposal for the ₹2-crore project in October last year, but the execution had been pending due to opposition from employees.