Rourkela’s bane: One officer, several posts
ROURKELA: Considered the fastest growing city in India’s east zone, Rourkela continues to be a victim of poor governance with one single officer overburdened with multiple responsibilities.After Rourkela was upgraded to a municipal corporation in 2014 and declared a smart city in 2016, posting of another IAS officer for the steel city became an urgent necessity. However, the perennial practice of putting a single officer in charge of several important departments continues to affect the administrative efficiency in the metropolitan area which has a population of around six lakh.
Despite the city’s rising profile and public aspirations, an IAS officer appointed as the additional district magistrate (ADM) of Rourkela has been given the charge of Rourkela Municipal Corporation (RMC) commissioner. In addition, he is the vice-chairman of Rourkela Development Authority (RDA), secretary of Land Allotment Committee, chief executive officer of Rourkela Smart City Ltd (RSCL), competent authority for land acquisition of national highways (NHs) and civil defence controller among other things.
The ADM is the de facto head of all revenue matters of the city. As chief of the city administration, the ADM is also the de facto head of the public distribution system (PDS). The ADM is further responsible for coordinating with appropriate authorities of the South Eastern Railway (SER) and Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) of SAIL on important issues and also address public grievances.
The post of the RMC commissioner is equally important. It demands covering widespread aspects of civic governance including health and sanitary services, delivery of a host of statutory and urban services mandated to the RMC and necessary development works.
Currently, Subhankar Mohapatra is holding all these posts. Making matters worse is poor availability of quality support staff under him in different offices.Sources said due to prevailing the situation, performance of different administrative wings of the city is mostly assessed through review meetings with little scope for regular field monitoring.
Former MLA of Rourkela Pravat Mohapatra reiterated the demand for posting two IAS officers for Rourkela with clear division of work jurisdictions. He said the residents deserve better governance and for that, overall supervision and monitoring has to be strengthened at the earliest.“Shoddy implementation of RSCL and convergence projects worth over Rs 1,500 crore and recent fatal outbreak of diarrhoea should be an eye opener for the government,” Mohapatra added.