Exam for Group D staff passes off well in state

MP | 20 May 2017 | Kolkata: The examination for recruitment of Group D employees, in which around 25 lakh job aspirants appeared on Saturday, passed off peacefully with the state government taking all necessary measures to help them reach examination centres without facing any harassment.

Out of the total examinees, around 5.5 lakh were from neighbouring states and around 6,000 of them will be absorbed for the jobs of Group D staff.

All the plans of the state government, as decided in the high-level meeting in Nabanna, were implemented properly resulting in a peaceful and hassle-free examination apart from one death and an accident in which three job aspirants from Begusarai in Bihar were injured.

One person died after he fell unwell while returning home after appearing in the Group D recruitment examination while five others were injured when their bus hit a rail bridge in Purba Burdwan district on Saturday, police said.

The three job aspirants received minor injuries when the vehicle in which they were travelling met with an accident on National Highway 34 at Jodhpur in Malda. The accident took place when they were heading to their examination centres in Malda. They were rescued and admitted to a local hospital. In reply to a question on reported "answer paper leak" in Midnapore, the state Education minister, Partha Chatterjee, took a dig at the erstwhile Left Front government for not taking any step to create job opportunities during their 34-year-term and said: "There are some people who are active to hamper the efforts of Mamata Banerjee's government in giving jobs to hundreds of people."

In the same breath he assured that such efforts cannot foil the measures of the state government and people will surely get jobs on the basis of their performance in the examination. Additional trains, buses and vessels were engaged to help students reach their destinations on time. Besides private buses, a total of 1,725 state-run buses plied on different routes across the state. Thousands of job aspirants reached Howrah and Sealdah stations to take bus or avail other transport facilities to reach their destinations. Buses from different important places plied since morning and around 50 buses were kept standby to engage in services if there would have been any emergency situation.

Around 79 trams operated in the city and 43 vessels ferried thousands of job aspirants across river Hooghly. The state Transport department took a unique initiative to set up help desks at different parts of the state. Officials posted at the help desks provided all sorts of information to job aspirants and directed them how to reach the venues of the examination.