Staff shortage cripples Pollution Control Board in Kerala

KOCHI: Even though Kerala has witnessed extensive environmental activism, in the past three decades the state has not toned up the staff strength of the Pollution Control Board (PCB), the key institution mandated to regulate and monitor environmentally-sensitive enterprises.

The board still operates with the staff strength it had been allocated in 1995, though new areas like municipal solid waste management, biomedical waste and high-rise buildings have been brought under its ambit.

The PCB has a sanctioned strength of around 320, and this was allocated as per the norms in 1995. Out of these 150 are remaining vacant, board chairman K Sajeevan told TOI here. “Forty posts are lying vacant even among the laboratory staff,” he said. “A committee appointed by the Supreme Court had recommended sanctioning of 20 additional posts to the PCB around six years ago, but nothing has been done so far,” Sajeevan said. The board had received 14,000 applications for starting various forms of enterprises and waste treatment facilities last year, from various parts of the state. Out of them 11,000 were disposed of, and they include 8,000 `consents to operate’ and 3,000 consents to establish.’

In addition the board receives 1,400 complaints and has to prepare around 150 reports for institutions and committees like the Lokayukta and Assembly panel on environment.

Staff shortage is likely to affect the board's activities this year, particularly as the three-year environmental sanction given to most of the industries will expire on June 30, and they need to be renewed, according to member secretary of the board P Molikutty. Usually these sanctions are being granted for a period of three years.

“The board issues consents to firms to operate, with some conditions. Monitoring the implementation of these conditions becomes a major casualty of shortage of staff,” the chairman said. A significant portion of the staff in the PCB is on deputation from other departments or is taken on temporary basis, and this affects the continuity of the board’s functioning.