West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s cracking of whip paid off: the attendance of government employees at the Writers’ Buildings was around 84 per cent. On normal days, the attendance does not go beyond 70 per cent.
The departments like minority affairs, jails and Assembly recorded 100 per cent attendance, while home, self help group and self employment, commerce and industries and bio-technology recorded 97, 95, 92 and 97 per cent attendance respectively.
By dishing out threats of break in service, she may have ensured a huge attendance of employees but she lost a lot of goodwill and popularity. “We would not have cared for a day’s salary loss. But the spectre of a break in service which may have adversely affected our career and jeopardised promotion forced us to report for duty,” said a group of employees who stayed overnight at the Writers’ Buildings.
Ms Banerjee, however, congratulated “her employees” for defying the bandh. She said that failure of the bandh would restore the tarnished image which the state had earned due to poor work culture. “I have personally visited 60 out of 67 departments at the Writers’ Buildings. In most of those departments, the employees’ attendance is 100 per cent. Yesterday, I appealed to the employees to report for work today. They joined their work. It is a revolution in the state,” the chief minister said, adding that the destructive culture of bandhs should end today.
Echoing her, working president of the Trinamul Congress-backed United State Government Employees’ Federation (USGEF) Soumya Biswas claimed that on average 85 per cent attendance was recorded in the state government offices across West Bengal.