NEW DELHI - After it was revealed that a huge chunk of employees of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) were fake, civic body’s standing committee chairperson Vijender Gupta Tuesday said the bogus work force will be identified soon.

“We have more than 100,000 employees but there was no streamlined system to check how many were actually working. So this biometric machine system which came into force at the class four employee level only two months back will be effective in identifying the bogus employees,” Gupta told IANS.

An exercise by the MCD to build a biometric identification database of its employees revealed that nearly 45,000 of its employees exist only on the paper and are not traceable.

Agreeing that there is something radically wrong, he added: It’s very damaging for the corporation that such a large chunk of its work force doesn’t even exist.

Talking further about the biometric machine system, Gupta said the project has not yet been fully implemented.

This is just the initial stage. We are still collecting the employees’ photos and details along with the fingerprints that will be stored in the machine. The last date for this is July 15, he said.

Gupta said the registration process, which started with class four employees, will be complete by July 15.

Installation of these machines was a very important decision and it was required to check the functioning of the corporation. Once identified, these bogus employees will either vanish or they will start doing their job properly,” Gupta told IANS.

About Rs.22 crore (Rs.220 million) were spent to install the 2,500 machines. These have been placed in the headquarters in Town Hall and also the MCD offices in 12 zones, he added.

The chairman also revealed that most of the problem was in sanitation and engineering departments, whose employees were largely involved in the racket.

The monthly salary of the over 100,000 employees is Rs.210 crore (Rs.2.1 billion). Since almost half of this is bogus, a large amount of money can now be saved, he said.