In a first, 74 civic employees shunted in Pimpri-Chinchwad

In a major internal reshuffle, Pimpri-Chinchwad’s municipal commissioner Shrikar Pardeshi has transferred 74 civic employees, especially head clerks of various departments.

The transferred employees of the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) had been occupying top posts for several years.

Pardeshi has ordered the transferred officials to take charge of their new offices with immediate effect and has warned of action against those dilly-dallying taking charge of new posts.

This is the first major internal reshuffle in the history of the civic body. The employees who were occupying the top posts for several years were considered close to various political leaders. Most of these 74 employees were from the octroi department.

The PCMC generates nearly 75% of its revenue through its octroi department. The government has approved 9,165 posts for the PCMC, but the civic body has been facing manpower shortage and presently, has 1,668 posts vacant.

At present, the PCMC has a total of 7,697 employees, including 85 class-I officers, 198 class-II officers, 3,038 class-III employees and 4,376 class-IV employees.

There were complaints that the civic staffers were not working efficiently.

While some employees were not transferred for years, others were transferred every six months. The civic administration always claimed that the transfers were being made considering the availability of the civic staff.

The civic staffers have been competing with each others to get into top departments like octroi, property tax, building permission, audit, health and licences and permission. The total strength of these departments was 1,917, and all of these employees worked with the same department for a period between 3 and 20 years.

While the health department has 659 employees, the higher education department has 178, the octroi department has 164 and the engineering department has 108 employees, all of whom have been working in their respective departments for more than three years. Pardeshi said that according to government rules, all employees should be transferred every three years and the reshuffling was done in accordance with these rules.