The West Bengal government has initiated a comprehensive manpower audit of contractual employees engaged across various departments through third-party agencies. The exercise aims to assess the actual requirement of such staff and identify possible financial irregularities linked to these appointments.
Scope of the Audit
According to sources, the audit will determine the exact number of contractual employees deployed in different government offices, their nature of work, tenure, and the expenditure incurred on their salaries through outsourced agencies. Concerns have been raised over alleged fund leakage and lack of transparency in the recruitment and deployment of several thousand contractual employees supplied by private vendors over the years.
Role of Webel and Webel Technology Ltd
A senior official stated that Webel previously supplied manpower to various government departments after sourcing from vendors. However, after 2023, Webel stopped participating in tenders. Instead, Webel Technology Ltd (WTL), under the personnel and administrative reforms department, has been supplying manpower to different government departments.
Bangla Sahayata Kendras
West Bengal operates around 4,000 Bangla Sahayata Kendras (BSKs) across 23 districts to provide people access to over 300 government services and welfare schemes. Each BSK is manned by three contractual employees, all supplied by third-party vendors. An official noted that there was "no need" for BSKs when Common Service Centres were providing similar services, and many BSKs were functioning with little or no work, leading to a "huge leakage of funds" through salaries for nearly 12,000 employees.
Routine Exercise
Samar Bhattacharya, secretary of Webel Cooperative, a society run by workers of closed factories of Webel, commented that the government conducts manpower audits of contractual employees from time to time, calling it a routine thing.
