The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will be spending almost ₹6 crore on its social media handles. The BMC, which became active on Twitter recently with guidance from a consulting agency, is appointing contractors for operation and maintenance of all its social media handles for the next three years. All ward offices and departments are now on Twitter.
BMC chief Praveen Pardeshi has pushed the civic body’s social media presence. Its official Twitter handle, @mybmc, has more than one lakh followers. Shiv Sena leader Aaditya Thackeray, who is active on social media, has also been pushing for the BMC’s online presence.
The official Twitter handle was started and is being operated with the help of a private agency for the time being. However, Mr. Pardeshi has directed that every ward and every department have its own social media presence, and the BMC has invited bids in this regard. The BMC needs agencies that will maintain its official handles, analyse citizens’ services at various levels as well as quality of services and link its website and other portals with its social media handles.
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The social media accounts will give information on announcements, updates, programmes, facilities, and events of the ward or department. Towards this, the BMC wants to procure trained staffers from a State government undertaking called the Maharashtra Information Technology Corporation Ltd (MahaIT). The civic body will be hiring 35 staffers, including information technology office assistants, content designers, writers, researchers and a social media expert.
The duration of the project will be three years. MahaIT has quoted ₹5.79 crore for the job, which has invited criticism. “The amount appears to be exorbitant. The BMC should have called for bids instead of directly appointing an agency. Hope it manages to deliver basic services, which it is unable to provide right now,” said Congress corporator Asif Zakaria.