January 22, 2014
Transparency in governance: WB Govt to recruit police and health department officials online
In an innovative decision made by the state cabinet, the state government will now recruit of state police personnel online, from junior constables to the DG level. The decision was taken to make the recruitment process transparent and less time consuming. Around Rs 2 crore will be spent to set up necessary infrastructure for the online recruitment.
Transparency in the recruitment of police
At present, all applications for a police job are processed manually. The application forms from the districts are first submitted at the office of the superintendent of police from where these are processed and sent to the Police Directorate at the state secretariat. It takes about two months to complete the whole process. It has also been decided that oral examination would be video-graphed and it will be sent to the Police Directorate for better transparency.
Senior officials of the state government said that several complaints have been lodged against the directorate, for recruiting policemen who do not have the required qualification. For the recruitment of junior constables, all candidates have to pass the Madhyamik or an equivalent examination. Even candidates with minimum qualification of Class VIII may apply for the post.
There are around 63,000-odd policemen in the state and very recently the state Cabinet passed the proposal to enrol 1.3 lakh civic police volunteers on a need-based employment.
In many districts, specially the suburbs of Kolkata, civic police volunteers have been appointed to assist police for better law and order and traffic management. The Cabinet also passed the proposal to recruit 1,000 civic police volunteers for the Siliguri Police force.
Online recruitment for health department
In another outstanding decision, West Bengal Government will now be recruiting physicians and health workers through an online process. The Health Recruitment Service Board will not only accept online application forms from the applicants but exams will also be held online. There will be processes for manual applications too.
Fees may also be submitted online, through net-banking. In the first step, all the required data may be uploaded online. Once this process is completed, the applicant will receive a system-generated ID and password through SMS. These will be required will submitting the fees via net-banking.
14 banks have been linked with the website. There are will be options to directly go to the bank and pay the fees as well. The online recruitment facility will speed up the process with proper transparency.
