The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) employs only 54 staff members in the vigilance department to keep check on the city’s engineering works such as construction and repair of roads, solid waste management project, water department work and building construction. The team includes the deputy municipal commissioner, chief engineer as well as the administrative office staff.

In the past three years, the vigilance department has gone through 10,386 cases and collected Rs 1.22 crore as fine from contractors. The work is being done by an inadequately sized staff, complained MS Shukla, deputy municipal commissioner, vigilance department. “We manage to cover only 25 per cent of the cases with the available staff,” he continued.