arunima ghosh
KOLKATA, 7 JUNE: The state government is spending Rs 6 crores per annum to pay salaries to 1600-odd employees of state-owned dairies although their services are no longer required following restructuring of the loss-making concerns. 
The reason is that the employees are not interested in being relocated to other departments. The state Animal Resources Development (ARD) department had given the option to the employees twice for relocating to the government department of their choice but only three responded.    
The employees belong to Central Dairy, Burdwan Dairy, Haringhata Dairy and Durgapur Dairy, of which around 1100 employees belong to the Central Dairy alone.
Because of the huge losses incurred by the government-owned dairies, the government had decided to restructure the dairies so as to reduce the production cost.
During the restructuring process, the department has identified around 1600 non-technical staff who presently cannot be engaged in any task in the dairies. In fact, even after the restructuring is completed, there is no capacity in which their services can be utilised, said an official.
The government has to continue spending such a huge sum till 2016, after which around 850 employees are expected to retire. "We are helpless since the employees are unwilling to relocate elsewhere and we are not in favour of transferring them forciby" said an official.
The restructuring process primarily involves merging the government-owned sick dairies, namely Central Dairy ~ where production cost dipped from 2 lakh to 35,000 litres during the past few years ~ and the dairies at Belgachia, Durgapur, Krishnanagar and Burdwan, with Mother Dairy, which incurred losses of around Rs 7 crore per month but turned into a profitable unit last year.
At present, work is on for merging Burdwan Dairy, which was closed over five years back. Following the amalgamation, the dairy will go in for diversification of milk products instead of focussing only on processed milk. The employees of the Burdwan Dairy will be engaged accordingly.
Next in line for being merged is Durgapur Dairy and a proposal in this regard is lying with the ARD minister, Mr Nure Alam Chowdhury, for being placed before the Cabinet for approval soon.
Haringhata Dairy has already been selected for restructuring and an amount of Rs 15 crore out from the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund has been earmarked for it.