GHMC chief’s orders to transfer staff ignored

Hyderabad: The additional commissioners have been turning a blind eye even to Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporations commissioner’s orders. B. Janardhan Reddy citing rampant corruption in various departments had given orders to reshuffle staff within the corporation limits. However, the orders were not implemented even after 17 months. Surprisingly, the officials concerned were not even aware of the transfers which were hidden by mid-level staff, who retired recently.

According to highly placed sources, the corporation is not only turning a blind eye to the erstwhile commissioner B. Janardhan Reddy’s transfer orders of sanitary field assistance but also various others in the transport department. Despite his orders, more than 10 sanitary field assistants have been continuing in the same circles. The SFAs threatened the zonal commissioners and also gave a written representation asking the later to only use registers, immediately after getting caught by the vigilance teams in cloned fingerprints for taking bio-metric attendance.

In January, the vigilance busted a fake biometric attendance scam. Sanitary field assistants (SFAs), who had been registering attendance manufactured artificial thumb impression using synthetic material to fake attendance. As many as 17 SFAs were caught using fake finger prints. In total, 84 synthetic finger prints have been found. The raids were conducted in 12 circles including Charminar, Kukatpally, Moosapet, Malakpet, LB Nagar, Musheerabad and Quthbullapur.  

However, sources said, ignoring the previous transfer orders by Mr Janardhan Reddy, the SFAs have been continuing in the same circles even after caught red-handedly. This apart, citing corruption in transport wing the erstwhile commissioner also reshuffled mechanics from parking yards. However, the additional commissioners who have worked in the sanitation wing were unaware of the city.

These orders were kept in secret by the recently retired chief transport officer (CTO).

A senior GHMC official, on condition of anonymity, admitted that he was unaware of the issue and said that a detailed probe will be done in this issue.

The official said that he had to verify the orders and check whether counter order were brought by the transferred staff.

He also assured that if irregularities were involved, criminal action will be initiated on the guilty.

When asked about the action initiated on SFAs, the official refused to comment.