Even as staff costs cross 52 per cent of Railway's operating expenditure, the All India Railwaymen's Federation – the largest rail union – has expressed concern over what it claims are over 2.5 lakh unfilled posts, a bulk of which are in safety-related jobs.

There are 1.56 lakh vacancies in the safety category, the Federation said.

Mismatch

“These are vacancies for frontline staff, operations and maintenance, loco pilots and assistant loco pilots, assistant station masters, trackmen, locomotive, coaching and station maintenance categories. This is when trains to be run are increasing,” Mr Shiva Gopal Mishra, General Secretary, All India Railwaymen's Federation, said.

The issue of safety being a casualty in the overall trend of curtailing staff has also been flagged by the high-level safety committee headed by Dr Anil Kakodkar.

With the introduction of a higher number of passenger and freight trains, the policy of surrendering as many posts as created by the Railways may no longer be feasible, says the committee.

vacancies

In the context of safety-related vacancies, it further added that such staff shortage on existing sanctioned posts was affecting maintenance of Railway assets related to safety.

The number of vacancies has been arrived at after taking into account the modernisation measures, Mr Mishra said. Officially, the Ministry had listed over 1.2 lakh vacancies as of April 1, 2011 in the safety related category.

Rise in accidents

In the last few years, the number of deaths and severity of injuries in train accidents has increased, while the number of consequential accidents has come down.

Between fiscal 2007-08 and 2010-11, there were 1,019 deaths and 2,118 injuries in train accidents.

> mamuni@thehindu.co.in

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