BOOTH TRUTH: The government’s near-defunct milk booths will be recast by a private firm. Picture by Amit Datta

With the public works department (PWD) asking for a premium to reconstruct the existing milk booths in the city, the state animal resources development department has decided to hand over the job to a city-based private firm.

Considering the poor state of the milk booths, the department had earlier assigned the job of reconstructing the milk booths to the PWD. “But they gave us an estimate of a huge sum of money. So, we decided to hand it over to the private company,” said milk commissioner Sundar Majumdar.

“They gave us an estimate of over Rs 30,000 to make over each booth. This expense is not possible for us to bear, more so as we don’t make much profit. Moreover, we have plans of handing over some of the milk booths to private agencies. So, we do not want to unnecessarily spend money on their reconstruction,” added Majumdar.

The company has already submitted its design of the model booths that it plans to construct to the department. Work will begin from the first week of December and will gradually include all the booths of the city.

In the first phase, the company will reconstruct around 25 milk booths on Amherst Street, Chittaranjan Avenue, Beadon Street, College Street and other places in and around north Calcutta. The work will be carried out in five phases.

“If the booths that we plan to reconstruct fail to sell milk even after the facelift, we will either shut them down or hand them over to the private distributors and agencies,” said an official of the department.