Metro Cash & Carry to recruit 325 for city centre

Metro Cash & Carry India will recruit around 325 persons to kickstart its operations and start pre-construction work within a week, now that it has managed to get permission to proceed with its centre at the southern end of the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass in Kolkata.

A company spokesperson said, "Metro continues to be committed to the West Bengal market and looks forward to creating win-win partnerships with farmers on one hand and small retailers on the other".

The spokesperson added, "We welcome the decision of the district court as it allows us to resume work in construction of Metro's first full scale centre in the state and start the onsite pre-construction activity within a week".

According to the spokesperson, "This also enables us to recall metro cash and carry staff hired for Kolkata currently deployed in wholesale centres in Bangalore and Hyderabad and continue our hiring process in the state".

The company would restart its hiring process too.

This had stopped due to land problems, but now that that hurdle had been cleared, the company said it would need a lot of people and therefore restart the hiring process immediately.

Each distribution centre was expected to have a team of around 325 people, starting with the one on the EMB in Kolkata.

Work on the plot had to be stopped after the Alipore civil court, in March of this year, directed that the nature of the land, earlier used for cultivation, could not be changed.

The court had passed the order in response to a petition filed by 225-odd claimants for that plot of land measuring 7.5 acres, comprising 3-odd acres leased from the government of West Bengal and 4.4 acres leased from the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) against a lease rental of Rs 16 crore in the first phase.

Metro had proposed to set up at least three cash & carry outlets in Kolkata, each spread over 7-10 acres and entailing investment of Rs 90 crore.

Upto 40,000 articles, primarily food items, would be stocked in each of these outlets, for sale to customers which be exclusively institutional buyers. The first outlet was scheduled for opening by December 2007 on the EMB land leased from the state government.

Metro Cash & Carry business model would link farmers, fishermen, livestock farmers, diary farmers and other manufacturers with institutional buyers.

Over 90 per cent of the products sold would be sourced locally and each such wholesale centre was expected to create on average 300 direct jobs and another 150 indirect jobs, besides helping export of products from West Bengal.