At a time when the global financial crisis has forced the private sector organisations to take a slump down, the public government offices too seem to be worried about rising costs. In its bid to curb ‘mindless’ expenditure-which is 47 per cent of the Rs 16,000 crore -the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the richest Municipal Corporation in the country, has asked all its departments to curtail the expenses, stop working overtime, avoid new creation of posts, make limited use of official vehicles and start recovery of pending water and property taxes.The BMC has issued a notification to all the departments to cut down the administrative expenses and limit it to 40 per cent of the total budget till 2010-11. The civic officials said that under the Center’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), limiting the administrative expenses is one of the reforms and commitments given by the BMC. “Accordingly, we have started taking the measures to curtail such expenses. Though 47 per cent is not too good or bad a figure to be spent for administrative purposes, we want to bring it down to 40 per cent,” said Additional Municipal Commissioner (projects) Anil Diggikar.At present, the civic body spends around Rs 7,520 crore on administrative purposes, including salary, fees, allowances to its staff, electricity bills, stationery, vehicles etc. There are 60 departments, 24 ward offices, 44 hospitals and dispensaries and many schools under the civic body. More than 1.2 lakh staff are employed by the BMC in the city. Diggikar said that being a government body, the BMC cannot retrench its staff or cut down salaries of its employees. “We only have two ways, to increase our revenue and limit our expenses,” he said.In a 11 point notification, all the departments under the civic body have been asked not to create unnecessary posts and to rearrange the staff to carry out work in case of shortage of manpower. The BMC has told its officials to provide a list of posts which have been vacant for the last five years and not to take additional charges for more than three months (some officials are paid extra, if they take additional charge of other departments in case of vacancy).It further asked civic officials to limit overtime for 50 hours in three months period and launch a special drive so that gradually overtime allowance can be brought to zero. The departments have also been asked to provide a list of additional posts which have been created after the implementation of the SAP technology. Similarly, the officials have also been asked to limit the use of official vehicles and not to make the drivers work overtime as they should be paid overtime allowances if they work beyond their official timings. To improve the revenue, the civic administration has asked the property and water department to recover the pending taxes.While the cost cutting measure is applicable to all the civic bodies that are getting funds under the JNNURM, most of the smaller municipal corporations do not have to worry as their administrative expenditure is not high. According to sources, in Thane Municipal Corporation, the administrative expenses are less than 40 per cent. “Our expenditure is around 32 per cent of the total budget, so there is no question of cost cutting. In fact, the state government has lauded us for low administrative expenditure. We top the list in terms of reforms and project developments under the JNNURM,” said K D Lala, city engineer, Thane Municipal corporation.
