The ghost employees of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi

You must have heard of employees not showing up for work.
Even heard of employees that shirk work.
But have you ever heard of phantom employees? Employees that draw their salary every month but do not exist in human form? Well our Municipal Corporation of Delhi has thousands of such ghost employees.
But what is the number of the ghosts that inhabit the payment rolls of the corporation, no one knows, least of all the MCD.

The Times of India has been carrying a series of articles on the rot in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, which Delhiwallahs have nicknamed the Most Corrupt Department - where things move only by palm grease.

This corporation we are informed has two kinds of employees - the permanent ones and the daily wagers. Many of them do not show up for work. The report says that thousands of them may not even exist, but their names appear on the rolls and these phantoms draw salary!!

No wonder I have not seen a safai karamchari ( the sweeper) ever on the lane on which my house stands... though MCD has assigned sweepers to every street. On record there are hundreds of these workers. So no surprise that you see Delhi's streets so piled up with filth and the municipal parks neglected. The gardeners too exist only on the salary rolls and are not seen in the parks. If they were you would not find them neglected and overgrown. If you see a well laid out park, you can be sure, the residents' association is taking care of it by hiring its own gardeners.

One estimate is that the phantom employees could number around 45,000. Though they never show up for work, they draw their salaries, milking the system dry of crores of rupees every month, according to these reports. The rot has been known to our political masters, the councillors who we elect. The paper says that the move to weed away these fictitious workers was opposed by these councillors and MCD staff way back in 2002.

And by the look of things, the councillors are once again trying to stop the enquiry, says the Times of India today.

The MCD needs to come clear on many fronts. The people of Delhi need to know --
The number of employees the corporation has
The total salary bill of these employees
How many of them are permanent and how many temporary
What is the need to have 'temporary' workers if there are posts that are still lying vacant (according to some reports)
The residents associations need to be given the names of the sweepers and gardeners assigned to their locality, so that a check can be kept on their attendance and to confirm that they do exist!

Earlier posts on the MCD -
The most corrrupt Municipal Corporation of Delhi
Where is my leader

A later post
Shocking scandal - Over 22,000 ghost employees in MCD