Siliguri, May 25: The Bengal government is in the process of delegating powers to chief executive officers of civic bodies and block development officers to work on environment related complaints at the local level.

“Thousands of complaints on pollution, environmental hazard and related issues pour into our offices. We need to attend to them. But most of these can be solved through local intervention, said Biswajit Mukherjee, a senior law officer of the state environment department, over the phone from Calcutta.

At present, after registering with the pollution control board with a specific complaint, a process of cross-checking and correspondence with agencies concerned follows. “This, naturally, is time consuming. So we decided to delegate the powers,” said Mukherjee.

The local level officials like the CEOs of municipalities and BDOs would be given the responsibility to receive complaints, intervene and work out solutions.

“If necessary, they can seek our help or refer cases to the department or the pollution control board (PCB),” Mukherjee said.

Through this system, the government machinery to curb pollution would be more accessible to people, the official claimed.

“Many people often think of coming to us, but do not know our contact numbers or addresses. They can now approach our representatives at the local levels,” another PCB official said.

“The central office in Calcutta will also be able to speed up its activities as the workload is expected to reduce considerably after the delegation of power,” the official added.

The environment department will train the local officials so that they get a clear idea of the new responsibility.

“The training on PCB circulars and environment legislations will be held in June. The directive has been already dispatched to the officials concerned and also to the district magistrates,” the senior law officer said. “The option of registering complaints directly with us, however, will remain.”

Paritosh Roy, the CEO of Siliguri Municipal Corporation, however, could not confirm receiving any circular from the pollution board. “I need to check whether it has reached my office or not,” he said.