Civic IT dept has no takers …..Clara Lewis I TNN
Mumbai: The BMC’s ambitious e-governance project does not seem to excite its employees. Despite an additional monthly allowance of 20%, there are few takers for a job in the information technology department and those who are already there are keen to move to other departments.
Consider this: in the last two years, only nine personnel joined the IT department and in the past month, four have already returned to their parent department while another two have sought a transfer. The nine-member team was being trained to take over the operations from the consultants and formed the core IT team.
Recently, the standing committee sanctioned an additional Rs 80 crore to enable the project’s completion. Since its implementation in 2006, the BMC has spent Rs 130 crore on hardware and software. The project, when completed, will not only make service delivery easy but effective monitoring will make shady deals that much more difficult to strike.
“There is no money to be made in the IT department as compared to the moolah that flows in, be it in octroi, property tax, roads and even the local ward office. It is not financially lucrative, and hence not attractive,’’ said sources. Sources, however, said those who had left had become close to the vendors and were not working in BMC’s interest. V Radha, joint municipal commissioner, incharge of IT, however, said, “Last month, we recruited 60 people to man the citizen facilitation centres. There are already 130 personnel here and we need around 250.’’
A circular has now been used for those who want to be SAP certified. “We want 100 personnel who will be SAP trained and form the core team. The corporation will spend around Rs 1 crore on the training. We want those who are in their late 30s and on the right side of 50 so that they do not leave the corporation and are not too old for the training to be wasted on them. The system analyst file too will be shortly cleared,’’ said Radha.
Senior civic officials are keen on a full-fledged IT department so that the BMC is not at the mercy of vendors who would take undue advantage of their position to bleed the corporation. But with few responding, it is an uphill task. “We are investing in training modules and also want each department to have its own SAP trained personnel so that it is decentralised,’’ said Radha.
Along with sanctioning more money for the e-governance project, the standing committee also sanctioned a one-year extension to the corporation’s IT consultant, TCS. “The mandate is that TCS must create a full-fledged IT department within one year, but the company has made it clear that BMC must provide the manpower for it to train. So far, there is no one waiting to be trained,’’ said sources.