MANGALORE: Mangalore City Corporation (MCC) is severely short of specialised departments to expeditiously deal with problems.

Among the city corporations in the State, MCC is rated second only after Bangalore, but the size of the departments are not commensurate with their responsibilities. The functions of various departments either overlap or are completely isolated from one other.

Owing to such problems, people have to wait for long for services such as issue of khata certificate, house number allotment and water connections. Other work also suffers as some officials are forced to take up matters that are not their responsibility. At present, the corporation has engineering, revenue, legal, health, establishment and accounts departments, and there are sections within these departments that have definite functions to perform.

However, owing to poor inter-departmental coordination and bottlenecks that arise while obtaining inter-departmental approvals, clearances of files and applications take a long time.

The corporation requires at least five more departments for operation and maintenance considering the increase in workload and the revival of sectors such as garbage clearance, sewerage management and solid waste management.

These are works that come under the Health Department. But, staff of various departments and outsourced workers carry out street-cleaning and waste collection and transportation activities. Chairman of the Finance Committee Premchand in his budget speech recently said: "The corporation needs more departments that are equipped to handle new operations and maintenance work." Chairman of the Health Committee Appi said that the Health Department should have a separate section for operations and maintenance of sewage treatment plants .

President of the Nagarika Hitharakshana Vedike Hanumanth Kamath told The Hindu that it was believed that after the partial computerisation , inter-departmental coordination would improve, but nothing appears to have changed.

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