Fire & Emergency Dept receives SKOCH (Silver) honour

Kolkata: The State Fire and Emergency Services department has received the SKOCH award (Silver) 2023 for online services. This is another feat to the department’s achievements. The State Fire and Emergency department has brought in several changes in the recent past in terms of infrastructure and services.

West Bengal Transport Corporation (WBTC) has received the Silver national award of SKOCH 2023 for “Citizen Friendly Reforms of the 150 year old Kolkata Tramways”.

WBTC got the recognition for making trams popular among youth and relevant again through small interventions like a library, a tram art gallery, a jute tram, creation of colour-coded tram maps, free wi-fi on trams and conversion of an old unusable space into a museum of sorts, called the Tram World. The WBTC has received two SKOCH Order of Merits also for e-governance in the Bus Ticketing System in Kolkata and turnaround of the water transport sector.

Bengal in October last year had received three SKOCH awards from the Centre that includes prizes for Aikashree scholarship, Operation Pushti meant for bringing down the number of SAM (Severe Acute Malnutrition) children and for good work by the state Forest department.

The SKOCH (Gold) award had been bagged by the state Minority Affairs and Madrasah Education department for excelling in the grant of scholarship under the Aikashree scheme. The SKOCH (Silver) award had gone to the Bankura district administration for bringing down the number of SAM children from 1,700 to 400 in eight months during the peak of Covid in the recent past.