Staff Crunch Keeps Safety of Rail Passengers in Jeopardy

Vijayawada: Staff crunch might adversely affect the safety of rail passengers in Vijayawada division of South Central Railway.

Though this division has a sanctioned strength of nearly 20,500 posts, including in wings dealing with safety like track maintenance, signal and telecommunications and carriage wagon among others only 16,500 posts had been filled while the remaining 4,000 posts remain vacant for a long time.

Railway sources say the lack of adequate manpower in such sensitive wings is causing an additional burden on the existing staff and fear is that they might, under stress, commit fatal errors.

Even in electrical loco sheds, where engines need to be regularly maintained and overhauled to make them fit to run for hundreds of kilometres, be these freight or passenger trains,  the requisite material for these are not being delivered to the technicians/engineers on-time. The sources say that the wait is long after placing indents for certain materials for locos. Those involved in the overhaul of locos are making some temporary adjustments to keep the trains on tracks and services running.

Though the laying of the third Vijayawada-Gudur railway line was completed long ago and the wait for sanction of 1,400 posts continues. So is the case with the doubling of Bhimavaram-Narsapur and Bhimavaram-Nidadavole sections, where too works were completed but the sanction of new posts is getting delayed. Under the present circumstances, there is every chance for mishaps, railway sources say.

SCR employees sangh divisional secretary Venkateswara Rao said, “We appeal to the Centre to fill up all vacant posts especially in key wings.”