New Delhi: The city Mayor and BJP leaders in
MCD on Thursday came down heavily on the Delhi government over its
claim before the Delhi High Court that the civic body caused a
loss of Rs 500 crore by paying salaries to "ghost employees".
Mayor Rajni Abbi, Standing Committee Chairman Yogender
Chandolia and Leader of the House Subhash Arya said the oral
statement of Delhi government standing counsel Najmi Waziri at
the court yesterday does not find any mention in the inquiry
report prepared by city police`s Crime Branch on the issue.
"The affidavit submitted by Vivek Gogia, Joint
Commissioner of Police to the court on May 3 does not say
anything about regular employees implying that the issue is
confined only to substitute safai karamcharies. Only some 1600
substitute workers remained unaccounted," Arya said.
The report also did not mention about "financial loss
running into almost Rs 500 crore" in five years, as claimed by
the counsel, Abbi said and termed it a "political ploy" to
"defame" the MCD.
The three leaders alleged that it is a "conspiracy" by the
Delhi government to divert the attention of citizens from
corruption in the Commonwealth Games.
Abbi said as part of the organisational reforms, the MCD
has implemented the bio-metric attendance system which has
eliminated the possible chances of existence of "so-called
ghost employees". "Not only this, the MCD itself started the
investigation to find the number of its employees," she said.
"Delhi Police Crime Branch probed to confirm the number of
substitute safai karmacharies to 29,589. At the end, 1,955
substitute employees remained absent from the physical
verification," Chandolia said.
He further clarified that there were 880 employees who
were dismissed from the service after remaining absent for
long years. "The salary of all these employees was stopped
earlier only," he added.
The leaders said reason behind variation in the number of
employees published in newspapers is that the list earlier
provided by MCD excluded the number of substitute employees.
They demanded that if the statement of the lawyer of the
Delhi government in this regard is true then he should file an
affidavit in the court stating on oath the oral statement made
by him.
PTI
