Two power sub-stations — one in Salt Lake and the other in New Town — will be run entirely by women.
The sub-stations, which together employ 34 women, were inaugurated on Friday on the occasion of International Women’s Day.
There are 972 power sub-stations in Bengal.
The state power department said this is the first time Bengal is having sub-stations run entirely by women.
The 132KV sub-station in Salt Lake, set up by the West Bengal State Electricity Transmission Company Ltd, will supply power to the East-West Metro line and the entire Salt Lake.
The 33KV facility in New Town of the West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd, will supply power to 2,000 consumers in the township and Rajarhat.
Both sub-stations were inaugurated by state power minister Aroop Biswas.
An official at the Salt Lake sub-station said there will be three shifts of eight hours each. In each shift, a workforce of junior engineers, technicians, an assistant engineer, security personnel and group D staff — all women — will run the facility.
“The work of the junior engineers and technicians includes operation of switches, finding snags in the transmission line if any outage is reported, operating the
transformers and recording meter readings,” said a woman, an assistant engineer, who is in charge of the Salt Lake unit.
Among the 26 women assigned to the sub-station are six guards, hired from a private agency.
The New Town unit, which is located inside the Elita Garden Vista housing complex, does not have guards. Eight operators-cum-technicians and other technical personnel will work there in shifts.
“Their work will be mostly related to operating switches. It is a relatively smaller unit and hence, fewer personnel have been deployed there compared with the Salt Lake unit,” said a senior official in the state electricity distribution company.
Both sub-stations will be operational 24X7 and throughout the year.
All the women posted in the two facilities have been transferred from other units of the state power department.
“I was the only woman at the sub-station in South 24-Parganas where I last worked. I am thrilled to be working in an all-woman unit now,” said one of the officials at the Salt Lake unit. “There are very few women in this field.”
Officials in the power department said they could not even tell what percentage of employees in the other sub-stations in Bengal are women.
Power minister Biswas said Bengal wanted to set an example for empowerment of women. “Our state is the only one in India that has a woman chief minister. We are trying to set an example for empowerment of women,” he said.
As for the expected surge in power demand during summer, the minister said: “Summer is approaching and the power department is fully prepared for it.”
Last summer had witnessed rampant power-cuts in the city.
