New Delhi: The Indian Railways has 3.12 lakh non-gazetted posts lying vacant across the country, The Hindu has reported, citing government data.
While railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in March last year said that there’s a huge staff shortage for all posts, the situation appears to be no different even now.
According to the minister’s reply to a starred question in the Rajya Sabha, the Indian Railways has 3.12 lakh non-gazetted posts lying vacant across the country, spread across 18 zones, as on December 1, 2022, the report said.
The maximum posts are vacant in the northern zone (38,754), followed by the western (30,476), eastern (30,141), and central zones (28,650), it added.
Non-gazetted posts include jobs for engineers, technicians, clerks, station masters, ticket collectors, etc.
A crushing staff shortage in the Indian Railways has led to many employees working overtime and numerous ticket booking windows being rendered non-operational, leading to long queues and congestion, the newspaper reported.
“I have been working double shifts for up to 16 hours at a stretch, because we don’t have staff to relieve us. I have not been able to take leave to study, because of staff shortage,” a 29-year-old employee at the Central Railway ticket booking office in Mumbai told the newspaper.
The employee is preparing for his law exams and hopes for an inter-departmental transfer to the legal section, once he clears the exam, the daily reported.
In the Central Railway, 14,203 vacancies out of the 28,650 posts, which is almost 50%, are in the safety category alone. The jobs in this category include operating and maintenance staff, such as inspectors of various kinds, drivers, train examiners, shunters, among others.
In late November last year, the National Railway Mazdoor Union (NRMU) of the Central Railway had staged a peaceful protest at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus against 28,705 vacant posts in the railways.
Among 1.19 lakh workers, 24% of the positions are vacant for almost a year, Hindustan Times had reported.
The daily had also reported that with vacancies not being filled by the government, most have to work overtime, while some are unable to accept promotional designations as there are no replacements. These issues have been impacting the functioning of the trains and maintenance of tracks, therefore putting passenger safety at risk.
Separately, a National Railway Mazdoor Union employee told the Hindu that the shortage of staff has also led to outsourcing of ticketing services. “The railways employs private parties who earn Rs 3 on every Rs 100 worth of tickets sold outside the ticket booking window. The job should have been done by the railway staff in the first place,” he said.
However, as per the report, an official response tabled by the Ministry of Railways in parliament said, “Occurrence and filling up of vacancies is a continuous process and the vacancies are filled by way of promotion and also through placement of indents with recruiting agencies as per operational requirements.”
The response further said, “Recruitment process for filling up 35,281 direct recruitment vacancies… for Non-Technical Popular Categories has been completed.”
The dismal numbers come nearly a year after several protests were held by thousands of job aspirants over the railway recruitment board’s selection process in January 2022. News reports suggested that at least 10 million applicants were hoping to get 40,000 jobs which were on offer. The numbers also corroborate the fact that the youth unemployment rate is among the highest in India.