The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has initiated measures to arrest the steep fall in sanitation standards in the twin cities with Commissioner M.T. Krishna Babu issuing unprecedented marching orders to several Assistant Medical and Health Officers (AMOH).
On Wednesday, in one swoop he transferred 10 medical officers and repatriated five of them to their parent Medical and Health Department following completion of five years of their service in the municipal corporation. AMOHs are the key officers responsible for the sanitation, issuance of trade licences besides preventive medicare.
Falling standards
The Commissioner was said to be contemplating the move for the last couple of months ever since he started receiving reports of the slip in the sanitation – roads sweeping, garbage lifting, collection and transport as well as in the issue of the trade licences.
The deterioration in the standards has been visible for the last six months as was indicated during two surprise inspection reports as well as vigilance reports where the degree of absenteeism among the workers/supervisors has been found to be around 30-35 per cent.
Senior officials have come to the conclusion that the situation was not going to improve with the current medical officers working for the last five to eight years in the municipal corporation and having developed vested interests over a period of time.
Repeated warnings has not led to any improvement in the ground level, they pointed out.
Interestingly, most of the these medical officers in the dock have also been facing charges of not remitting trade licence fee collected – each running into lakhs of rupees and also of having joined the job with dubious public health diploma certificates. Both the issues are currently being probed.
