Last week, the Union Commerce Ministry received a request for more staff from Neera Saggi, Development Commissioner of SEEPZ SEZ, whose jurisdiction includes SEZs and Export Oriented Units (EOUs) in Maharashtra, Goa, Daman and Diu as well as Dadra, Nagar and Haveli. The SEEPZ SEZ Commissioner stressed that the scope of work had gone up considerably now that her jurisdiction included 52 formally approved SEZs and 23 SEZs with in-principle approvals.

Incidentally, in a missive to the eight SEZ development commissioners on April 27, the Commerce Ministry had sanctioned 10 posts for each of the notified zones under their jurisdiction. Even as efforts to fill those posts were at different stages in different Commissionerates, the amount of work keeps increasing with each meeting of the BoA. Since the empowered Group of Ministers lifted the freeze on new SEZs on April 5, the BoA has met four times, formally approved 101 SEZs, granted in-principle nods to 24 SEZs and notified 64 SEZs.

Again, of the 64 SEZs notified since the freeze was lifted, 36 were notified before the April 27 sanction and 28 after it. For instance, the SEZ Commissioner of Cochin (in charge of Kerala, Karnataka and Lakshadweep) had 99 staffers in its headquarters, including 44 security officers. In April, 10 posts each were sanctioned for 15 zones. Following the April sanction, four more SEZs were notified in its jurisdiction. The 10 posts sanctioned for each SEZ included customs officials, a superintendent, appraisers and preventive officers, a stenographer and accounts officers, among others. A Cochin SEZ official told The Indian Express, “The scope of work is vast and entails administrative as well as regulatory jobs. We have to examine all the issues in proposed SEZs—from land titles and complaints about the acquisition procedure to developers’ backgrounds—and report to the BoA, apart from overseeing existing/notified SEZs and EOUs.”

Meanwhile, The Indian Express has learnt that the Department of Commerce decided to conduct a “staff inspection unit work” study at the Development Commissioner’s offices to measure work responsibilities and arrive at the optimal number of people required. Incidentally, the Parliamentary Committee report on SEZs’ functioning, released last week by its chairman Murli Manohar Joshi, lashed out about the shortage of staff in Development Commissionerates “particularly on the customs and central excise side”.

Pointing out that the Commerce Ministry’s proposals for creation of posts “got stuck” with the Ministry of Finance, the Panel said the “development pursuit of such gigantic proportions should not be left to the whims and fancies of the Ministry of Finance and miniscule financial considerations should not come in the way of creating posts in the SEZs”. In fact, the Panel suggested that in future, creation of posts and posting of officials be done along with the notification of an SEZ.