Railway Employees’ Welfare, Recruitment and Training

  The Minister for Railways, Mamata Banerjee announced a number of measures for the welfare of Railway employees in her budget speech in Parliament today. They are as follows:-

1.      Expand the scope of Liberalised Active Retirement Scheme for Guaranteed Employment for safety category staff by enhancing the existing criteria of grade pay from Rs. 1800/-  to Rs. 1900/-
2.      Considering the Indian family structure and values, extending medical facilities to both dependent father and mother of railway employees.
3.      Increasing the scholarship for the girl child of gangmen and group ‘D’ employees to Rs.1200 per month for higher education.
4.      Setting up of a Railway Vidyalaya Prabandhan Board (RVPB) to improve quality of education to children studying in 269 railway schools. The Board will draw up a plan for improving the physical and educational infrastructure of these schools to be implemented in a time frame of three years.
5.      To provide 20 Road Medical Vans in remote and inaccessible areas for railway employees for easy access to medical facilities.
6.      20 hostels for children of railway employees have been commissioned and another 20 would be set up next year.
7.      Undertaking of restructuring of all cadres in the Railways to afford adequate promotional opportunities to the officers and staff.
8.      Recruitment process has already been set in motion for filling the vacancies of about 1.75 lakh in Group ‘C’ and Group ‘D’ posts. Steps have also been taken to fill up about 13,000 posts in Railway Protection Force. These mega recruitment drives will cover the backlog of SC/ST and physically handicapped quota.
9.      For the first time, the Ministry is inducting 16,000 ex-servicemen by end of March 2011. More than 1200 ex-servicemen in Railway Protection Force are being recruited.
10.  A Training centre is proposed to be started at Kharagpur to enhance skills of frontline staff in dealing with the customers.  Multi-disciplinary training centres would be set up at Dharwad, Kolkata and Pune including an exclusive international centre at Agra. A new basic training centre at Kurseong is proposed to cater to the needs of North East Frontier Railway including Darjeeling-Himalayan Railway.

Source:pib