Chennai: Public thronging corporation offices for various services are upset with empty chairs as engineers are often missing at ward and zone offices across Chennai.
The engineers are now frequenting head offices to speed up the ward delimitation works skipping daily routine that deals with civic services.
According to confidential sources with Ripon Buildings, the city civic headquarters, the lackadaisical attitude of the state election commission has affected the productivity of corporation officials.
With the state election commission not stating its stand on the civic polls, there is no clarity on the subject. Further, the SEC is completely depending on the local bodies for the delimitation exercise and has failed to address the local politicians and their queries related to the shifting of voters to other wards.
This had made the local engineers and the zonal officials answerable to the local politicians from both the ruling AIADMK and the DMK.
Last month, a former a councillor called and verbally abused me over the recent delimitation exercise. He failed to understand the logic behind the shifting of voters to the nearby ward based on the population, rued a corporation engineer who is part of the delimitation exercise in north Chennai. According to another official, the workload has doubled due to the delimitation works, thereby reducing the office time and public interaction.
“We are still not clear about the delimitation exercise, however, the field report has been compiled and forwarded to the district election and state election commission offices”, said an official.
“The corporation engineers are not visiting their respective wards and are always missing in their seats. When the public throng the zone office for further queries the situation there is even worse,” said civic activist Arani Sreenivasan of Harbour constituency.
