WB Pollution Control Board Forced to Withdraw Tender for Contractual Recruitment

The West Bengal government on May 26 cancelled the tender for appointing Group C and Group D staff after arousing much confusion. The notice for the appointments had been earlier issued by the  State Pollution Control Board, which later stated that the cancellation was “due to some administrative reasons”. 

On May 10, a notification regarding this tender was published on the website of the West Bengal Pollution Control Board. The notification said that tenders have been submitted to various authorized contractors for Group C, and Group D posts. Interested companies were supposed to submit an application by June 6 and a bid security fee of Rs 3,32,000. The submission of the tenders started on May 23.

The notification said that a total of 95 people will be recruited. Of these, 75 were to be Group C status workers and the remaining 20 were Group D workers. Posts to be filled included data entry operator, typist-cum-data entry operator, office assistant Gr-I, software developer, senior account assistant, call centre personnel, law assistant, environment officer (C), lift operator, and environmental worker. According to the notification, approximately Rs 1,01,50,648 were to be given to the contractor company for 95 people per annum – which would have meant an expenditure of Rs 8,45,904 per month for 95 contractual employees by the West Bengal government. These workers were to get an average salary of Rs. 8,904 per month. But in the tender papers, the Board didn’t mention any wage structure for Group C or Group D workers separately.

In January, the minimum monthly wage in the state was fixed at Rs. 8,904. On the other hand, the Pollution Control board will give this amount of money to everyone as per the notification. This raised the question as to whether the lift operators or other workers would have got the same salary as the law assistant or environment officer. Another question that was raised was if the appointment has to be made by calling tenders, what was the use of the Employment Bank created by the Chief Minister.

The chairman of the board, Kalyan Rudra, said he was not aware of this tender. He said he would look into the matter personally and on May 26, the board cancelled the total tender process and issued a notice.