Shortage of gangmen brings track safety under lens

Kochi: An acute shortage of  gangmen, who form the base of the organizational structure,  but  are entrusted with crucial safety aspects like track inspection, has compromised the rail safety resulting in incidents like the one at Kottayam.

In a queer case,  a youth, suspected to be ‘mentally challenged,’ tried to derail trains by damaging a stretch of track between the Chingavanam and Kottayam sectors on Thursday night. Train services were  disrupted briefly following the incident.

“Currently,  there are nearly 1,300 vacancies, including ‘absent vacancies.’  Against a sanctioned strength of 3,900, the division has only 2,600 personnel in the category.  In the Ernakulam section itself against a sanctioned strength of 290, there are only 171 personnel,” an engineering department official said on  condition of anonymity.

A gang team includes 15 trackmen, one keyman and one gangmeter. However,  instead of 17 personnel, most teams now consist of only six or seven.  This compromises the security as each person  has a jurisdiction of only six km, he pointed out.

Divisional Railway Manager Sunil Bajpai admitted to the shortage. “They keep an eye on the tracks. We’ve shortage.  However, we expect some recruitment to happen soon,” he said.

Deploying inspection trolleys  with a speed of maximum eight km/hour ahead of every train to detect any  materials on tracks is not possible as  the track utilisation in the division is already 140 per cent. The public too can play an effective role.  On noticing any  suspicious movement, they can alert the cops by dialling ‘182,’  the  dedicated
toll-free security number.

Mr  Bajpai observed that the attacks in Kottayam  were  not stray.  “How can so many incidents happen together? It’s for the cops to probe all the angles,” he said.

According to the police,  the youth, said to be an electronics graduate, allegedly made three attempts to derail trains.   Initially,  a bike was left on  the tracks near Chingavanam as the Malabar Express came chugging.  

The Thiruvananthapuram-bound Amrita Express too hit some metal parts hours later. In between,  the car of the railway officials,  who came to inspect the spot,  was attacked and its tyres were found flattened. Also some materials were thrown from Pakkil RoB at the overhead wires.