Hyderabad: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), without informing the state government, recruited 100 technical staff and 75 non-technical staff in June last year.
When the government issued a notice asking the civic body to appoint work inspectors for the ongoing infrastructure projects like the Strategic Road Development Plan (SRDP) and the 2BHK housing project, the corporation informed their engineers that in order to post them as work inspectors, it needed financial clearance.
Subsequently, engineers were asked not to leave the city for they could receive clearance at any point and would be posted immediately afterwards.
A year has passed and the engineers are still awaiting their joining orders.
The Regional Centre for Urban and Environmental Studies (RCUES), which works under the Union urban ministry, released a recruitment notification on May 5, 2018, following which an examination was conducted.
After completion of the verification process, the staff were asked to report to the GHMC before July 5, 2018.
The candidates who reported to the corporation headquarters were deputed in circles offices and zonal offices.
Engineers said that they had received signed copies of their joining orders from the assistant engineers at the site. The very next day, however, the civic body asked the work inspectors to leave the site, claiming their date of joining had been postponed and the next date would be announced soon. They were even asked not to leave the city as they would have to join at any moment.
Work inspectors said that the recruitment conducted by the GHMC never received financial clearance from the government.
The corporation first cited the Model Code of Conduct to explain the delay in posting, and now, they’re claiming that the recruitment needs clearance from the state Cabinet. And although the issue was brought to the notice of the former GHMC commissioner B. Janardhan Reddy and even incumbent commissioner M. Dana Kishore, it has not been sorted out yet.
GHMC chief engineer (administration) K. Suresh Kumar said that the staff was shortlisted by the RCUES, who then issued the joining orders.
He further explained that it is due to the staff crunch that the civic body has had to outsource engineers for the ongoing infrastructure projects.
Mr Kishore said that the officials from the finance department believe that the recruitment requires approval from the state cabinet and that the issue would be taken to the notice of chief secretary S.K. Joshi.
