BMC slashes fine slapped on errant engineers

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to reduce the penalty amount that the guilty engineers from the roads department have to shell out.

The fine amount — slapped on 38 civic engineers — has been brought down from Rs90 lakh to Rs8.34 lakh.

Last month, additional municipal commissioner Aseem Gupta and chief engineer of the roads department Giridharilal Agarwal summoned the engineers and asked them why there had been a delay in assigning pothole-filling jobs to contractors.

The engineers had left the meeting fuming. The officials later asked the engineers to put across their side of the story. “We penalised them not to show them in a bad light. The message should be loud and clear that such lackadaisical attitude will not be accepted,” said a senior official from the roads department.

On Friday, the engineers stated that too much workload caused the delay and made it difficult for them to inspect each site personally. “We will consider such cases and try to address their grievances,” the official added.