The building of Bihar State Pollution Control Board in Patna. Telegraph picture

Patna, July 6: Bihar State Pollution Control Board (BSPCB) is suffering from manpower shortage as no fresh appointments have been done for over 15 years.

According to department sources, the last appointments were made around 1993-94 and since then the board is discharging all its duties with the same workforce.

“There have been no fresh appointments in the board since more than a decade. One of the prime reasons behind such a situation is non-bifurcation of the assets and liabilities between BSPCB and Jharkhand Pollution Control Board after the creation of the latter at the time of separation of Jharkhand,” said a senior official of BSPCB.

He added: “While BSPCB had Rs 2.5 crore assets before the bifurcation of Jharkhand, it has now come down to nearly 60 lakh making it financially weak. Also, BSPCB has currently minimal power to make appointments by itself. Moreover, this has led to several vacant posts in the board at present and excess load on the existing workforce.”

Sources in the department said that before the separation of Bihar and Jharkhand in 2000, there were seven regional offices.

However, five of such regional offices went to Jharkhand’s Jamshedpur, Dhanbad, Ranchi, Deoghar and Hazaribagh.

Now, there are only two regional offices in Bihar —Muzaffarpur and Barauni — and only two regional officers for the entire state.

It is because of this manpower shortage that at times the monitoring and inspection of the entire state goes into a crisis situation.

“I am the lone officer of this department for the entire state and thus I have to run around Bihar for monitoring purposes. Moreover, I have to collect data by physically moving around the entire state, compile it and prepare reports. At times, it takes days in going to remote places and come back, which results in delay in my duty,” said an in-charge of a pollution monitoring department at BSPCB.

According to sources, presently there are three scientists at BSPCB headquarters in Patna, out of which one will retire on July 31. Another three assistant scientific officers would supplement the remaining two scientists.

“Presently, one person takes care of three persons’ job here at the board. Now, there are only three scientists and I believe there is a necessity of around 20 scientists to smoothly carry out the jobs,”said a scientist at BSPCB. BSPCB was constituted in 1974 according to the provisions of Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974.

Subsequently, the board was given powers to appoint officials by Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Rules 1975.

Rule 8 of chapter-3 of this rule gives provision for creation and abolishment of posts, stating that state pollution control board is required to take prior permission from the state department of environment and forest for creation of, and appointment to, posts, the maximum of the scale of which is above Rs 2,400 per month.