Manpower crunch at factories: chief inspector

With an increase in the number of unregistered factories in West Bengal, there was a severe paucity of manpower, claimed S Das, joint director of factories, government of West Bengal.

Speaking on the sidelines of an interactive session organised by the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BNCCI), Das said that West Bengal had a large number of unregistered factories and there were only 40 inspectors at various levels to manage various slated areas.

"One inspector had to manage and inspect as many as five districts single handedly, so it gets a bit difficult."

The number of inspectors was 'inadequate' compared to other states like Mahrashtra and Andhra Pradesh.

However, steps were being taken to face the crunch by appointing around 14 inspectors at various levels, advertisements for which had already been floated.

On an average around 300 factories were registered with the Factories Act every year in the state, while about 70-80 cases of illegal factories were registered annually. Majority of the illegal factory clusters was around Topsia area of Kolkata, informed Das.

The department also faced severe constraints in bringing various factories under the purview of registration due to land issues since these industries were nor transparent about whether the land was under rent or was sub-let, since 'sub letting' of land was not permitted.

Further, cases filed against unregistered factories was also quite time consuming and usually needed a long period of time, added Das. These factories against which cases were slapped, had a to pay a penalty amounting to Rs 1 lakh.