The millennial city’s year-round struggle with waterlogging, poor sanitation and other civic problems appears to stem from a severe staff crunch in the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG), particularly in its engineering wing.Despite being Haryana’s richest civic body, the MCG has 78 per cent of its field-level junior engineer (JE) posts lying vacant.Official data shows that only 32 of the 147 sanctioned JE posts are filled. Responsible for inspecting drains, supervising contractors and verifying work on the ground, these engineers serve an estimated population of nearly 18 lakh, translating to just one JE for more than 56,000 residents.The shortage is equally severe among assistant engineers, with 36 of the 51 sanctioned posts vacant, leaving more than 70 per cent of positions unfilled. Together, assistant and junior engineers account for 151 of the corporation’s 156 vacancies, almost all of them in divisional field offices.While the post of Chief Engineer is occupied, only one of the two Superintending Engineer posts and four of the 10 Executive Engineer posts are currently filled. Overall, the engineering division has just 55 employees against 211 sanctioned posts under a notification issued on August 7, 2026, leaving 156 positions, or nearly 74 per cent, vacant.Successive MCG commissioners have highlighted the workforce shortage to the state government and sought recruitment to match the needs of the rapidly expanding city. However, approvals and postings have failed to keep pace. The impact was evident during the monsoon season. The MCG’s roster identifies 155 waterlogging hotspots, averaging nearly five for every serving JE. On August 24, heavy rain inundated key stretches, including NH-8 and Sheetla Mata Road, prompting the district disaster management authority to advise offices to allow employees to work from home.Sanitation services face similar challenges, compounded by recurring strikes by sanitation workers over issues such as wages, regularisation and workplace safety. These protests frequently leave garbage uncollected for days.Between January and August, the MCG spentRs 173 crore on sanitation-related works, including garbage collection, road sweeping, manpower deployment, vehicles and stray animal management. Yet residents continue to complain about overflowing garbage dumps, irregular door-to-door collection and unswept roads.For much of the year, civic services relied on interim arrangements. Temporary tenders for door-to-door waste collection were issued in January and June, while road-sweeping contracts were floated in March and July. A long-term garbage collection contract worth ?647 crore was awarded in August, while the road-sweeping tender remains under technical evaluation.“The engineering posts have been created under the restructured cadre and recruitment is being taken up. Sanitation will improve once the new agencies are fully on the ground,” said MCG Commissioner Pradeep Dahiya.