Durgesh Nandan Jha, New Delhi
The Pioneer
They may be struggling to issue a command on the laptop but the municipal councillors want hi-tech printers to be given them by the civic body.
According to sources, the legislative wing of the MCD has written a letter to the executive wing demanding that printers should be provided to all councillors. It would cost about Rs one crore to buy printers for all 272 councillors.
Nonetheless, most of the councillors are yet to be familiar with the basic functioning of the laptop, for which the MCD spent Rs 1.25 crore approximately. Still, none of the councillors carry the laptop and even the officers have tenaciously refused to use them for official works. The MCD turned to manual tendering recently due to this.
"Yes, a letter was forwarded to us for buying printers. There was also a demand to give an operator each to the councilors. Both matters are under consideration," KS Mehra, MCD Commissioner, said. Sources said that the plan was sent to the Commissioner stating that the councillors faced problems in getting printouts.
"The councilors stated that they found it difficult to get print outs of official letters written by them on the laptop. According to them, the provision of laptop was incomplete without availing other related gadgets," said the source.
As for the requirement of operator, councillors had demanded that they should be given Rs 5,000 extra every month so that they can hire a man to operate the computer under e-governance programme. The MCD had lately announced to upload minutes of all Standing Committee meetings on the Net and made it compulsory for the councilors to come with their laptops in the meeting.
Nonetheless, the fact remains that no councillor carries a laptop and few councillors are comfortable working on the machine. In most cases, either these are being used by family members or are stacked on the shelf. Not more than 50 percent of the elected representatives are graduates
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