The Indian Railways has found that more than 13,000 of its staff or on unauthorised leave. The absentee employees are now being laid off. This is a new step towards making the Indian railways function better.
The 13,000 people make up 1% of the workforce. This has been a prolonged effort. A massive drive has been initiated to identify the defaulters. The railways have instructed its officers and the supervisors to hold the defaulting workers responsible. The 13,000 being sacked are long-term absentees and have been found among the 13, 00,000 overall workforce. This is part of the drive to improve the working of the railways and its functioning. The drive to make the railways more efficient was initiated by the Railways minister, Piyush Goyal.
This move was also initiated with the intention of boosting the morale of the diligent employees in the railways. The zone-wise details reveal that in the central railways, out of the 1357 employees action has been taken against 1097 of the workers. The Indian Railways has also sent out notifications of vacancies. There are presently about 62,907 job vacancies. The vacancies include posts for Trackman, Cabinman, pointsman, etc.
The Indian railways are known to be the world’s largest employers. In the budget, the Northern railways was given 9,000 crore rupees for the year 2018-19. The Southern Railways, on the other hand, will get 7,500 crore rupees. With the vast workforce that it has, it is unsurprising that the Indian Railways at its size has 13,000 workers on ‘unauthorised leave’. The Indian railways last year received lots of bad press regarding derailments and accidents. Hopefully, these moves to make the system more efficient will help in the coming future. But, it doesn’t solve the problem of unemployment. The laying off will only add to the number of job vacancies in the Indian Railways. But maybe stricter rules regarding jobs and leave could help the matter.