The college near Kurseong

Siliguri, Feb. 1: The Eastern Forest Ranger College in Kurseong has not been able to conduct induction courses for rangers for almost three years now because of lack of faculty and low recruitment of range officers.

The institution was set up to provide an orientation course for the newly recruited rangers before they were posted at different places.

But after the last batch passed out in 2007, the only ranger college in the country under the control of the Directorate of Forest Education (DFE) is holding only two-week refresher courses and one-week workshops for in-service officers.

Currently there are two faculty members in the college, instead of five, including principal W.I. Yatbon, who joined a year back, and Thiru Selvan, an assistant instructor who joined in September.

“We don’t have regular faculty here and the instructors who come are usually on deputation. They apply for the posts and the government deputes them to the college. However, not many people are interested since they are reluctant to leave their home states and come here. The main reason is that the accommodation facilities here are not up to the mark. Right now there are just two quarters for the instructors. If housing arrangements are made for faculty members then more officials would apply for posts here,” Selvan said.

He added that the government had advertised twice for the posts but there was little response.

Located at St Mary’s Hill, 4km from Kurseong town, the place was called St Mary’s Seminary and it was under the Catholic Mission of West Bengal until the government purchased it and established the EFRC in 1974.

“It was difficult to conduct induction courses after 2007 so we have been organising refresher courses and workshops,” Selvan said.

The other two ranger colleges in the country are at Balaghat in Maharashtra and Haldwani in Uttarakhand under the respective state governments.

“The state governments have adopted low recruitment policy for range officers. This has resulted in no admissions for rangers at the college and this is another reason why we have not been able to conduct the induction courses. We have a capacity of training 40 range officers from all over the country at a time and the induction course is of 18 months’ duration,” said Yatbon.

He said with no induction courses being held in the college the newly recruited rangers are sent to Central Academy for State Forest Services in Dehradun in Uttarakhand, Burnihat in Assam or at Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu.

The authorities have also complained that the college building is very ill-maintained. “It is a very old building and although it houses the required facilities, there is severe leakage problem during the monsoon. The maintenance is very poor,” Selvan said.