Instances of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) employees getting caught on charges of corruption are not unusual, but the latest case was different for more than one reason.
Sanitary Field Assistant G. Lingam, who was caught by Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) sleuths two days ago, is not a regular employee of the civic body. He is one of the outsourced employees in the sanitary wing.
In most instances, the complainants in GHMC-related bribery cases would be citizens. In Lingam’s case, however, the persons who knocked at the doors of ACB were also indirectly connected to the civic body. They were collectors of garbage using four-wheeled trolleys. And the amount the arrested person demanded and received was too high compared to the previous cases. Lingam, working in Mothingar area of Sanathnagar, was accused of pestering three garbage collectors to pay him ₹ 2.4 lakh and eventually settling for ₹1.8 lakh.
He was caught red-handed receiving ₹1.8 lakh at a restaurant. This is the first time that an outsourced employee was caught with such huge sum of bribe vis-a-vis previous cases.
“We made sure that he was under the category of public servants since his salary was being paid by the government,” ACB DSP Ashok Kumar said on Saturday. Some ACB officials had suspicions over possible complicity of other officers in the sanitary wing. They made the complainants to speak with the Assistant Medical Officer of Health (AMOH) concerned over phone. “The officer told the garbage collectors over phone that they should not give a single rupee to anyone,” the DSP explained. Still, Lingam insisted that the garbage vehicle operators pay him money.
Normally, one vehicle operator is assigned a locality having 600 houses on an average. He would charge ₹ 30 to ₹60 per house or ₹100 per commercial establishment for collecting garbage. The SFA — also referred to as sanitary supervisor sometimes — allegedly began threatening three garbage collectors to pay him ₹ 80,000 or said he would bring in new vehicle operators and allot them their areas. Demands for bribery are allegedly made for building permissions, covering up illegal structures or processing files.
