Heavy vacancy position on Indian Railways leading to unbearable additional burden and serious staff discontentment – immediate action

Heavy vacancy position on Indian Railways leading to unbearable additional burden and serious staff discontentment –  immediate action

NFIR

No. II/95/Part X

Dated: 27/05/2017

The Chairman,
Railway Board,
New Delhi

Dear Sir,

Sub: Heavy vacancy position on Indian Railways leading to unbearable additional burden and serious staff discontentment – immediate action – requested

NFIR brings to your kind notice that due to accumulation of vacancies in lakhs in safety as well other than safety categories, the systems are suffering very badly and employees are heavily over burdened. Serious discontentment and unrest is prevailing among staff as they are heavily over burdened with the additional workload on account of non-filling of vacancies.

Non-creation of additional posts for maintenance of newly created assets has further aggravated the situation. New stations are opened for traffic on some Zonal Railways, but sadly new posts of Operating Staff (Station Master, Points Men etc.,) have not been created. Likewise, new Railway Lines have been opened for traffic but unfortunately safety category posts have not been sanctioned and above all, safety category vacancies continued unfilled. On some stations, no pointsmen are available while at some stations, the station masters are managing with single Points Man, facing heavy stress while performing train passing duties.

Complaints have also been received that periodic rests are denied to staff on some Zones,leave refused due to shortage of staff and at the same time shortcut methods are being resorted to for denying payment of Over Time Allowance etc.

In C&W, S&T, TRD, TRS and Diesel Organizations, there is heavy shortage of staff as the norms/yard sticks are not being followed, consequently staff are put to sufferings. There is also heavy shortage of Supervisory Staff in the Technical and Operational categories. On some Zones, the shortage of Track Maintainers is so heavy that for patrolling duties, Tiack Maintainers are not available. It is no exaggeration to frankly state that crisis situation has developed on Railways mainly on account of heavy shortage of staff.

NFIR wants to convey to the CRB without mincing words that any delay in filling the vacancies and creating new posts in safety categories for maintaining newly created assets would cause serious setback to the Railways’ efficiency. The Federation further conveys that the Railway employees are very restive, extremely unhappy and angry over the failure of Railway Board in filling the vacancies.

Federation therefore, requests you to kindly take a realistic view and see that approval is given for filling vacancies and creating new posts immediately to save the Railways and equally preserve healthy industrial relations

Yours faithfully

(Dr.M.Raghavaiah)
General Secretary

Source : NFIR