Railways going slow on recruitment

 The Indian Railways, one of the largest employers in the world, is currently going slow on recruitment.

About 2.26 lakh posts are lying vacant, but there is no speedy effort in sight to fill  them owing to the Plan Holiday declared by the Narendra Modi government.  Among the vacant posts, more than 60 per cent are related to safety jobs. 

However, ministry officials claim that recruitment is an ongoing process and “we are doing it.” Mamata Banerjee, during her tenure as rail minister, had brought filling of vacancies high on her agenda and declared a new policy to fast track recruitment. However, a scam derailed the process and it took time for her to revise the policy to streamline it. 

Empanelment

Successive ministers of Trinamool Congress followed the policy which resulted in the empanelment of 1, 86, 913 candidates in 2012-13.  

The next year, 2013-14, the empanelment slowed down only  to 73,000 candidates. Claiming that recruitment will go on normally, a senior official said that the ministry has planned to empanel 81,000 persons in 2014-2015. 

Despite a huge gap, why the ministry did not recruit people who have been already selected is a  question which is generally evaded by the officials. 

“There are elaborate processes between selection and recruitment. It includes such examinations like medical and others. At least , 50,000 people retire every year,” the official told Deccan Herald. 

However, the official admitted the fact that Railways presently has only 12.51 lakh employees against the 14.77 lakh sanctioned posts. 

On the other side, the ministry has started outsourcing jobs and the All Indian Railwaymen’s Federation (AIRF) is up in arms against it. AIRF general secretary Shiv Gopal Mishra wrote on September 7,  that the federation is opposed to move of appointments through “Manpower Service Providers”. 

The opposition came in the wake of appointments being made for the post of stenographers. The union opposed the move on the ground that it will harm the confidentiality of the decisions related to vigilance and other information of “secret” nature.