KMC’s printing press sits idle, machinery wasting

The Indian Express visited the 130-year-old printing press on SN Banerjee Road and found that even though much of the machinery is by now antique, with a bit care and planning, it can still be used. But in its absence, the press is now virtually a white elephant.

Since July 2005, as the CPM took over the civic body, the press has been assigned little work, say senior corporation officials. Breakdowns have become a recurring feature and many of the units are now nearly defunct.

The press has 15 printers — three of them automated. But five of them are either defunct or malfunctioning. According to a department official, the letter printers and the automatic printers are able to publish the kind of documents and leaflets the KMC has been outsourcing. But even the monthly magazine titled “Puroshree” is not printed from the KMC’s own press. Every month, the corporation spends about Rs. 2.7 lakh to publish it from outside.

“The authorities never took an initiative to repair the defunct printers and modernise the press,” said one of the officials. “With many of the machines nearly 130 years old, these have assumed huge antique value,” he added.

But this does not stop the KMC from having an army of employees for the upkeep of the press.

According to a senior official of KMC’s personnel department, the printing department has around 135 employees, whose net salary ranges from Rs 10,000 to Rs 18,000. And few of them have enough to do.

“We sit idle throughout the year. We have appealed to the authorities several times to assign us work so the department can function properly, but in vain,” said an official.

Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya maintained the civic body is planning to modernise the printing press soon. “We have received a proposal from the printing technology department of the Jadavpur University. We need to take an expert’s opinion before the task given to them,” he said.

According to a senior civic official, the KMC press can run without any problem for the next 30 years if the technology of JU is implemented. “The university plans to install latest machines that will perform all the publishing work. A committee has been set up to carry out a feasibility study,” said the official.

Modernisation by the JU will cost the municipal body about Rs 5 crore. “So we have to consider what amount we can afford in this phase of recession,” said Bhattacharya.