Friday, March, 29,2024

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MANTRALAYA CANTEEN STARVED OF PERSONNEL

Mumbai: Cabinet meetings at Mantralaya, the state secretariat of Maharashtra, always witnesses hectic activity and large crowds of favour seekers thronging the corridors of power. The menu of snacks for the 20 strong council of ministers, including the 18 newly minted ministers without official portfolios as yet, is also a big affair.

The “specials” of the past two days included cashewnut laden Batata Wadas, Cutlets, Upma, Dhokla and an assortment of dry fruits and exclusively ordered Bengali sweets for Maharashtra’s council of ministers. These rolled out from the canteen to the seventh-floor cabinet room on Wednesday, where Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, Deputy CM Fadnavis and 17 of the 18 new cabinet members (Sudhir Mungantiwar gave the meeting a miss) were discussing important aspects of the state. The canteen also witnessed a record footfall of 1,200-plus, resulting in food shortages. Worse, catering all but collapsed Tuesday and Wednesday with the canteen services at Mantralaya coming under severe stress. The ‘Acharya’ (Chief Chef) who had to man the kitchen from 8 am to well past midnight on Tuesday, saw his work hours on Wednesday also get stretched to inordinate lengths.

The late Tuesday-night meeting, in which Shinde and Fadnavis failed to resolve the tangle over portfolio allocation, meant that the already short-handed canteen department had to dig deep to make it to the end of the day. While it has a sanctioned strength of 157 employees, the canteen only has 90 personnel- -many of whom are contract employees who leave their stations at 5.30 pm on the dot each day. “This placed a huge burden on the limited staff. We need permanent employees as the contractual staffers are time-conscious, generally refusing to put in any extra hours of work. Even our strength is far lower than the sanctioned strength of the canteen. Things will come close to a collapse every time there is a crowded house at Mantralaya,” a staffer said before hurrying off with a tray full of the cabinet specials.

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