Railways to go on a recruitment drive

National carrier set to hire at least 25,000 this financial year

The Indian Railways is set to hire at least 25,000 employees this financial year. The national transporter has a shortage of about 225,000 employees. Of this, 54 per cent of the deficit is on safety side, SHINE JACOB writes

The month-long monsoon session of Parliament is likely to commence from July 12. According one of the proposals before the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs (CCPA), the session will begin from July 12 and conclude on August 11, according to government sources. The final call on the dates will be taken by the committee, headed by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, after June 20, the sources said.

The Indian Railways is set to hire at least 25,000 employees this financial year. The national transporter has a shortage of more than 225,000 employees. Of this, 54 per cent are there who work in departments that issue safety.

“Nearly 25,000 will join the railways in 2017-18. Tests for 18,252 posts including assistant station master, inquiry-cum-reservation clerk, traffic and commercial apprentices, goods guards, and junior accounts assistant have been conducted. In addition, applications for another 7,000 assistant loco pilots will be invited soon,” said an official source close to the development.

Soon after this, vacancies for another 13,000 will be opened under various categories including technical supervisors.

Last year, the Railways had conducted the world’s largest online examination, in which 9.2 million job applications were received for 18,252 vacancies. “More than 270,000 people were called for a written test early this year and we finally shortlisted about 18,000. These applicants are set to join us in a few months’ time,” he added.

As of December last year, the Railways had more than 1.3 million employees, and 225,823 vacancies in the Group ‘C’ and the erstwhile Group ‘D’ categories.

It has 122,911 vacancies in the safety categories and a shortage of another 17,464 loco running staff.

This comes at a time when an audit on gazetted officers done by Deloitte suggested that the Railways was neither “understaffed nor over-staffed” in the officers’ category. The Railways has around 18,000 executive officers.

Deloitte was expected to formulate a manpower policy for the gazetted officers of the Railways.

“Though people say we have vacancies of more than 200,000, a large portion of it does not need to be filled because we have advanced technologies and a computerised safety mechanism. Filling vacancies is a continuous process through various modes of intakes,” the official added.

The Railways has been planning a rationalisation of its manpower over the years and in a decade it has recommended surrendering close to 140,000 posts, according to sources.

Railways officials say most accidents happen at unmanned level crossings, which number more than 6,000 in the country. Hence critics are highlighting the inadequacy of the staff strength.

The Indian Railways has a network of more than 67,312 km, with about 12,600 trains carrying around 23 million passengers