A centralised inspection wing to look into complaints against industrial units will become operational from July 30. The new entity will be known as the Kerala Central Inspection System (KCIS).
The original deadline was August 1 but the opening has been advanced by two days. Such a centralised system was one of the major decisions taken at the first Cabinet meeting of the second Pinarayi Vijayan government.
"The centralised system will be implemented through the portal developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC)," Minister for Industries P Rajeev told reporters in the Media Room of the Assembly on Thursday.
The introduction of the KCIS is significant as it comes barely a month after textile giant KITEX had complained of bureaucratic harassment and decided to relocate to Telangana.
In the initial phase, the centralised inspection wing would coordinate with five departments, viz., those of Factories and Boilers, Labour, Local Self-Government, Legal Metrology and the Pollution Control Board, the minister stated.
Other crucial departments like the Health, Geology and Mining, and Fire would be roped in during the second phase of the project.
The stated objective of the KCIS is to introduce transparency into industrial inspections.
Three kinds of inspections will be carried out by the KCIS:
One, the inspections to be carried out before an industrial unit begins operations. Two, routine inspections. Three, inspections on the basis of complaints.
"The inspection schedule will be automatically generated by the portal," the minister said. "Units will be selected for routine checks after segregating them into low, medium and high-risk one," the minister explained.
Inspections based on complaints can be conducted only with the consent of the department head. To ensure fairness, Rajeev said that the officials conducting the checks would be picked by the portal. "It will be ensured that one inspector would not conduct consecutive checks in a unit, " the minister said.
He also said that the industrial unit would be intimated of the inspection by SMS and e-mail. "The officials should upload the inspection report on the portal within 48 hours and it should also be given to the unit," the minister said.
Both the entrepreneur and the departments could login to the portal.
The portal will also provide the history of inspections conducted in a unit. "So, if an inspection was held within two months, a repeat inspection could be ruled out, " the minister said. The complaints that the public upload on the portal will be transferred to the relevant departments.
