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RAWALPINDI, Jan 1: The Tehsil Municipal officer has attributed the poor sanitation condition in the city to large-scale corruption in the sanitation department.
The Tehsil municipal officer (TMO), Col (Rtd) Najmul Hassan Malik, said: “a supervisor receives Rs80, inspector Rs70, and chief sanitary inspector receives Rs50 as bribe every month from every lower staff member of the sanitation department.
This has been happening since 1932, when the now defunct municipal corporation was established”.
Mr Malik was speaking in the Tehsil Assembly on Monday in response to a point of order, raised by a member alleging that the sanitation officials were involved in corruption.
The councillors, however, are of the view that the rate of corruption is much higher.
They alleged that millions of rupees were being taken from the salaries of the sweepers and distributed as bribes among the sanitation officials every month.
The sanitary workers allegedly pay a portion of their salaries to their seniors every month and then remain absent for 10 to 15 days or as many days as they wish from duty.
The sanitation officials in return mark the absent staff members present in the attendance register.
This is the main reason of poor sanitation condition in the city.
On the other hand, the TMO as well as the sanitation officials blame the ban on fresh recruitment and shortage of sanitary workers as the main reason for poor cleanliness.
Yasmin Bashir, Naib Nazim of union council 34, told the House that when she informed the TMO about the sorry state of affairs, the latter expressed his inability to check this practice. “We have started paying salaries to the sanitation staff through cheques to stop this practice,” she quoted the TMO as saying.
The elected representatives said the TMA officials, specially the TMO, tried their best to keep them in the dark about all such corrupt practices. “They probably thought we are ignorant and would just play in the hands of the TMA officials,” said Ilyas Khan, the Naib Nazim in the union council 12.
