Rly union rivalry exposed rot in parcel management
CHENNAI: Southern Railway (SR) has little or no reason to celebrate last week’s vigilance raid at Chennai Central which helped bust the overloading of an entire wagon of a parcel special train from Howrah.
While commercial department officials claimed credit for the smart work of the vigilance department, employees admitted that the raid has exposed the rot in the Parcel Management System (PMS). PMS, employees alleged, has been rendered less effective in the zonal headquarters due to a nexus of parcel agents and some staff largely affiliated to an influential employee’s union and a few indifferent officials.
“Officials might argue that overloading happened at Howrah and claim credit for vigilance dept imposing Rs 1.6 lakh fine. Did commercial supervisors detect the overweight consignments? The wagon carrying 260 overweight parcels on train No 00616 would have gone undetected if the vigilance team here was not alerted by Eastern Railway. Vigilance sleuths had sealed the wagon on Monday night only a week after it raided the same train on September 8. How can officials give clean chit to parcel section employees and vouch for the efficacy of PMS?” argued a highly placed SR officer requesting anonymity.
A commercial supervisor asked; “How did 30 men, mostly parcel agents and their labourers illegally reach the spot during the raid? Why did RPF personnel not stop everyone except the authorized contractor? How did vigilance officials detect parcels bearing invoice numbers of consignments taken away the previous day, on September 8? Over a month ago, the operations department detected overweight to the tune of eight tons in a parcel van. Now, the vigilance department has done it. How many cases did commercial staff crack?”
Over half a dozen cases, including cases of parcel theft and disappearance of impounded consignments were reported in the last couple of years.
“Let them blame it on Howrah. What about the previous cases, especially the disappearance of parcels? In a few instances, employees were suspended or transferred or both. Some of the employees have either returned to the same place or close by and a few have had their punishments reduced on appeal after a while,” a commercial clerk with knowledge of the PMS working in the division disclosed to DT Next, before asking why an inquiry into one such case was being hurriedly conducted by an officer due to retire in a month, while other cases were deferred due to lockdown.
When asked, Dr D Vijayamala, senior divisional commercial manager said, “We had suspended and transferred employees in the case of breaking the parcel van seal very recently. No one has been allowed to return to the same office. The case of disappearance of the parcel had happened during the tenure of my predecessors. The ACM probing one such case has tabled other probe reports too. No haste is shown in any case probe. We have been cracking down on being overweight or overloading regularly. We have imposed penalties on agents and parties as and when our staff detect it. No parcel enters or leaves Central without going through PMS. Often, unions try to settle their differences by fighting from our shoulders. Our priority is to ensure that PMS works well and railways does not lose even a penny,” the senior DCM added.