Prerna Shinkar becomes Pimpri-Chinchwad’s first woman executive engineer

Shinkar took up the challenge of getting into civil engineering, generally considered strenuous for women, all those years ago and worked her way up the ladder by playing key roles in many important civic works.

Prerna Pradeep Shinkar been promoted to the post of an executive engineer at PCMC.

Nearly 50 years after it came into existence, the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) finally has a woman as executive engineer as Prerna Pradeep Shinkar (51), a civil engineer with PCMC for 25 years, has been promoted to the post.

“I have reason to feel happy and proud as I am the first woman executive engineer of the Pimpri-Chinchwad civic body…,” Prerna Shinkar told The Indian Express Sunday. PCMC has over 300 engineers holding different designations. Of which only 15-20 are women.

After completing her civil engineering from SSVP college in Dhule, she worked with Pune’s Wadia college for a couple of years and then joined PCMC as a junior engineer in 1996. Nearly 16 years later, she was promoted as deputy engineer and last week, she bagged the coveted post of executive engineer.

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Recounting her journey with PCMC, Shinkar said she has worked in different sections like the water supply department and drainage department. “During my tenure, I was instrumental in setting up two sewage treatment plants and a water treatment plant. Right from the construction of the plants, designing, getting everything done as per the plan and to successful commissioning of the projects, I have managed all through my hard work and support from colleagues,” she said.

Getting the defence ministry permission for road work in Dighi was another big achievement. During her career so far, twice she was honoured as the meritorious employee of the civic body. “First time, I received one additional increment and the second time, I got double increment for outstanding work,” she said proudly.

“Civil engineering is generally considered a strict no-go field for women as it involves slogging in the heat and dust for hours. But I accepted the challenge with the full support of my husband Pradeep Shinkar and the entire family. He understood the demands of the job as he is a civil engineer himself,” she said, adding that both of them were classmates in SSVP College in Dhule.

“Civil engineering field requires a lot of energy and grit. It is a challenging field for women. It is not a desk job, you have to go right on the field to accomplish the job. I got an opportunity to work on the field and did not hesitate one bit to take up with the challenge,” she said.

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From 1996 to 2021, she worked with different municipal commissioners. “All of them were very supportive but I shared a good rapport with the likes of Shrikar Pradeshi and Rajiv Jadhav,” she said.

About the general working atmosphere in PCMC, Prerna said, “It has been smooth sailing in PCMC. The colleagues and bosses have been supportive. It has been an encouraging atmosphere all through my career.”

PCMC executive engineer Pravin Ladkat, who was also holding the joint city engineer’s charge for some time, said, “Prerna Shinkar has worked under me. She is a hardworking and knowledgeable colleague. She believes in carrying out in-depth study of a project before doing it.”

Shinkar’s next big promotion is due in 2024 as joint city engineer. “My current promotion happened due to the righteous decision of municipal commissioner Rajesh Patil. He acknowledged my sincere and hard work. I will continue to work in the same way to achieve further success in the civic job,” she adds.

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Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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