The health department will outsource services in hospitals such as maintaining sanitation of wards and toilets, providing security and electrical work.
Two departments will contract out projects and services; municipal unions to stage protests
MUMBAI: The BMC seems to have joined the outsourcing bandwagon, too. First, it was the hydraulic department that awarded zonal contracts to six agencies on Wednesday for executing water distribution projects. Now, the health department will outsource services in hospitals such as maintaining sanitation of wards and toilets, providing security and electrical work.
After a meeting of the senior staff on October 6, the department directed the deans of three major hospitals—KEM, Sion and Nair—to prepare a detailed proposal for the requirements, based on which a tender floated to appoint an agency to carry out the services. DNA has a letter to this effect, duly signed by additional municipal commissioner Kishore Gajbhiye.
The decision was taken after the deans of the three hospitals expressed dissatisfaction over the inefficiency of civic staff employed for the services. For BMC, however, the decision may be like treading on thin ice. It is believed that outsourcing may render sweepers and ayahs in hospitals jobless. The municipal unions, riled at the departments’ decision to outsource, are planning to stage protests against it.
Representatives of Municipal Engineers Association (MEA), which has a membership of 350 engineers from the hydraulic department, and Municipal Mazdoor Union (MMU), which enjoys support from a majority of labourers, met on Thursday to discuss the mode of agitation.
Advocate Sukhdeo Kashid, secretary of the two unions, said, “The BMC bosses are highlighting their staff’s limitations and extolling private contractors. For years they have not recruited the manpower required in order to operate efficiently, nor is the staff equipped with adequate machinery.” Kashid, a member of the defunct leak detection squad of the hydraulic department, said 1,601 posts (1,384 for labourers and 217 for skilled staff) in the hydraulic department were lying vacant. Several posts in 19 civic hospitals too were lying vacant.
BMC’s decision to hike spending limit of its staff for zonal contracts also invited the unions’ ire. “We had for long been demanding an increase in the spending limit for hydraulic department staff. An assistant engineer could allot work only up to Rs500 and the hydraulic engineer (HE), the department’s head, could allot work only up to Rs10,000. For the contracts, they have increased HE’s spending limit to Rs20 lakh. Why did they not do this earlier?” asked Kashid.
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