The Asian Age: Mumbai: Saturday,
October 05, 2013.
The BMC came
under fire on Thursday for spending money lavishly on its babus in the name of
professional ethics enhancement training, yet producing no visible results. An
RTI query has revealed that among the seven BMC officers suspended for
dereliction of duty following the collapse of Babu Genu building in Dockyard
Road, two were ironically selected for a session on “ethical training” held at
Panchgani last year.
This
professional ethics enhancement training was part of workshops that were mooted
by the BMC.
Additonally,
in reply to the RTI query, BMC joint chief personnel officer P.P. Walinjkar
clarified that the BMC had paid a sum of `67.5 lakh to Friends of Moral
Re-Armament (India).
According to information provided to RTI
activist Anil Galgali, executive engineer Atul Kulkarni was amongst those who
participated in the programme on October 10, 2012, and is among those suspended
in the building collapse case. Mr Kulkarni was part of batch number 5 that had
a total of 42 officers in attendance. Incidentally, of the other suspended
officers, executive engineer Chandrashekhar Dande and assistant commissioner
Chandrash-ekhar Choure were selected for batch number 6, whose session was held
between January 7 and January 11, 2013, but only Mr Choure attended the
session.
“The idea
behind the ethics sessions was to get officers to reflect upon their vision,
the current reality and gaps in civic administration, but unfortunately the
babus did not learn anything or they learnt something otherwise,” said Mr
Galgali. Demanding an inquiry on wastage of taxpayers’ money, Mr Galgali,
chairman of NGO Athak Seva Sangh added, “The main objective of the
administration should have been to give an insight into duties and
responsibilities as public servants, to sensitise them and increase
productivity, but the BMC has completely failed to do so.”
BMC chief
Sitaram Kunte could not be reached for comment, as his cellphone remained
switched off. Deputy municipal commissioner of general administration
department Kiran Achrekar refused to comment on the issue altogether. A senior
BMC official, however, said that the idea behind the programme was to tap their
own inner resources for inspiration to learn from each other, to evolve a
paradigm of ethical leadership and governance for themselves, to discuss case
studies and research on the public.
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