NEW DELHI: Officers of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) are burning the midnight oil to complete the trifurcation process of the corporation, that employs 1.48 lakh people, in three months. Since this job will entail conducting an audit of the number of employees, Opposition parties have demanded that the puzzle of 23,000 ‘ghost employees’—who draw salaries but exist only in municipal records—be solved. The Delhi government, through its lawyers, recently submitted before the Delhi High Court that a loss of Rs 500 crore had been incurred in the past five years on account of salaries paid to 23,000 ghost employees.
Jai Kishan Sharma, MCD leader of the Opposition said, “I had raised this issue for the first time in the house, following which the Delhi police started an enquiry. It has been found that MCD has 22,853 ghost employees and public money to the tune of `500 crore has been wasted, or siphoned off, in the name of their salaries and perks. Now that trifurcation is on, an audit will be done to transfer employees to one of the three new municipal corporations. It’s natural that this issue is solved now once in for all, and the onus lies on the administration.”
Sharma said that a CBI enquiry should be done in the case. He said he’ll take up the matter with Lt. Governor Tejendra Khanna next week. Recently, the police arrested a software engineer, found to be a ‘ghost employee’ enrolled as a sweeper in MCD for the past 10 years. During investigations, it was found that he was employed to MCD by a relative.
Akali Dal councillor Manjinder Singh Sirsa said, “Many of the ghost employees have already been found. Now when MCD is conducting an audit as a prelude to trifurcation, the administration will make full efforts to find if any more ghost employees are present.”