The small tea growers’ directorate under the Tea Board was to become operational from September. That did not happen. In a chain of events that led to the delay, our national carrier is being held responsible.
The recruitment of development offices and others to be employed by the proposed directorate could not be completed in time. The reason: the written test and interviews for the candidates could not be held in time due to the delay in the processing of applications. There being no in-house facility, Tea Board entrusted the job of processing to a Delhi-based agency which lost all the applications, about 1,700 or so, in transit. The agency lays the blame squarely at the doors of our national carrier which, it is alleged, lost the application packets while ferrying them between Kolkata and Delhi. The packets could not be traced ultimately. The Tea Board, therefore, had to do everything afresh and, in the process, precious time was lost.
As the situation stands now, the written test is over and the interviews will be held shortly and the appointment letters issued most probably in December. Then there will be training for those recruited. April 1, 2013 is the new deadline. In other words, the commissioning of the directorate will be delayed by more than six months.
A total of 41 development officers are being recruited – 13 for South Indian gardens, seven for West Bengal, one each for Tripura and Himachal Pradesh and the balance 19 for Assam. The general principle is: one development officer for each location having three to five thousand small growers. In South India, one officer for 5,000 growers and in other places 3,000.
The headquarters of the directorate will be located in Dibrugarh in Assam. The premises have been acquired and the work is on to make it ready at the earliest. There is a proposal for holding a high profile inauguration ceremony of the directorate headquarter in November. “But we’re not sure as much will depend on the convenience of the VVIPs due to grace the occasion,” observe Tea Board sources.