By IANS,
New Delhi : Mayor Kanwar Sain Thursday pulled up the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) slum department “for sitting on files endlessly” and ordered a fresh survey of slum dwellers and encroachments in the national capital.
“Since 1994 there has been no survey of slum properties. So it is difficult to ascertain the number of slum dwellers and status of encroached public lands in Delhi.
“I have directed officers that they must immediately form a committee or team which will look into this work and report back to me with details in 15 days time,” Sain said.
On inspecting the slum and JJ (jhuggi-jhopadi) department offices, Sain found that files dated 2008 had not been processed or cleared.
“System of the file going to multiple people is very long. Encroachments are not even removed as a result of the files not being cleared. Slum encroachments on any government land – be it Delhi government, DDA, corporation land – should be ordered to be cleared immediately… else they’d become more difficult to remove over time,” Sain said.
“It is a fact that most of the people here are sitting idle working on files endlessly,” he added.
After detailed discussions with department officials including the additional commissioner R.D. Srivastava and others, Sain has asked them to simplify and cut short the cumbersome procedures to make the slum wing more “people-friendly”.
He added that during discussions officials spoke of working constraints hampering functioning like that of several positions not being filled up.
This, he said would be dealt with at the earliest adding that he would conduct fortnightly meetings with the department officials to address their grievances.