Transport corporation staff yet to get Oct salary
TIMES NEWS NETWORK 03.11.2011
Kolkata: Nearly 24,000 employees of the five state transport corporations have not yet received their October salary. A notification was issued on Monday, stating that the salary would be delayed as the state government is yet to release it.
Though salaries do get delayed at times by a few days, but the notification has led to speculations. Government officials, however, are arguing that this is not due to shortage of funds. Transport minister Subrata Bakshi said that hundreds of people had been recruited during the tenure of the Left Front government that had no sanction of the state government. The corporations had conducted recruitments on their own, the minister added.
“I have asked for a list of those recruited and we want to review the entire recruitment process that has taken place for so long. We have been asking the corporations to become self-reliant, but they are not coming up with steps that will help them generate their own funds,” Bakshi said on Wednesday.
The five state transport corporations — Calcutta State Transport Corporation (CSTC), South Bengal State Transport Corporation (SBSTC), North Bengal State Transport Corporation (NBSTC), West Bengal Surface Transport Corporation (WBSTC) and Calcutta Tramways Company (CTC) — have been asked to submit plans that will enable them to be self-reliant. State transport and finance ministers had met officials of all the corporations and told them that it would be impossible to continue paying their salaries if they did not generate their funds and make any profit.
The corporations are making losses and the state government has to pay a huge amount of subsidies to keep them functional.
Managing director of CTC, Pradip Chattopadhyay said: “We will follow whatever the government instructs us to do.” He said that CTC last recruited some drivers and conductors in 2010 on contractual basis and it was decided that the salary of the drivers would be given from the profit of running the new JNNURM buses. CTC runs 120 of such new buses.
The corporations are overstaffed and the government shells out more than Rs 350 crore annually to make them survive and pay salaries of the employees. For the past few months, several hundreds of retired employees of these five corporations have not been receiving their pensions regularly.
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The winds of change have swept minister Firhad Hakim’s 800sq ft Writers’ Buildings chamber, thanks to a Rs 40 lakh makeover.
Hakim, in charge of the urban development and municipal affairs departments, has personally overseen the revamp, carried out by a private contractor over the past month. “The public works department (PWD) usually undertakes such projects but the minister wanted experts to do the job,” said a senior Writers’ official.
The government may be reeling under a debt burden of over Rs 2 lakh crore but its efforts to make the state secretariat more attractive and comfortable show in the first-floor chamber.
Metro toured it on Thursday, on the eve of its inauguration. The chamber is divided into three parts: the office of the personal secretary and the personal assistant to the minister, the minister’s office and the antechamber with an attached toilet. The walls are vinyl, the flooring wooden and the tiles, of various textures and styles.
A semi-circular table with an Italian marble top and a revolving chair with a specially designed backrest are at the centre of the minister’s room. A photograph of Mamata Banerjee is on the wall behind. A 40-inch LCD television will be installed soon.
Besides the photograph, four paintings by Rabindranath Tagore adorn the chamber, to be cooled by two split air-conditioners, each of 1.5 tonne.
The antechamber has an off-white luxury recliner, a footrest, a sofa and a small refrigerator. It also has another 1.5 tonne split air-conditioner.
The contractors said the makeover cost Rs 40 lakh but PWD officials estimated a bill of over Rs 60 lakh.
“Furniture, electrical appliances and fittings, tiles and woodwork of the quality used in the chamber could not have come for less than Rs 60 lakh. This kind of décor is common in corporate offices but not in government offices in Bengal. Even Rs 40 lakh is an unprecedented amount for the revamp of a minister’s chamber,” said a PWD official.
In 1973, months after assuming power, chief minister Siddhartha Shankar Ray had modernised the toilet in his chamber at a cost of Rs 2 lakh. The move had triggered protests by the Left-backed employees’ unions.
During the 34-year rule of the Left Front, the chambers of ministers were austere and, as a rule, maintained by the PWD.
Employees of various departments made a beeline to take a peek into Hakim’s chamber on Thursday.
“We had seen pictures of the chief minister’s chamber after it was refurbished in May. That was the most well-furnished room we had seen at Writers’. This chamber outshines even the chief minister’s chamber by far,” said an employee of the personnel and administrative reforms department, who has been working at the state secretariat since 1986.
Most ministers, including finance minister Amit Mitra, power minister Manish Gupta, commerce and industries minister Partha Chatterjee, irrigation minister Manas Bhuniya and tourism minister Rachpal Singh, had refurbished their offices within a couple of months of assuming office.
Mamata had handed over a cheque for Rs 2 lakh to chief secretary Samar Ghosh to pay the PWD for revamping her chamber.
“When you have to work for 10 hours daily, you need basic infrastructure. An investment-friendly environment is necessary for attracting investors to the state. If you can bring in investment of Rs 100 by spending Re 1, why not?” she had asked.
Hakim declined comment on the revamp of his chamber. “This is not something I want to talk about,” he said.
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