International Women's Day 2018: In a first, NF Railway engages all-woman maintenance staff

GUWAHATI: On the eve of International Women's Day, the Northeast Frontier (NF) Railway has become the first railway zone in the country to engage an all-woman team of technicians for maintenance of rail coaches. It will start serving the railways with a new role from Thursday.
Chief public relations officer of the NF Railway, PJ Sharma said that with the increase in the number of trains operating from the Guwahati railway station, the all-women team of technicians will look after the maintenance and cleaning of incoming coaches in the pit line maintenance facility

"It's a big day for the NF Railway. Today, we have commissioned an all-woman maintenance gang at Guwahati railway station, on the eve of International Women's Day - to be celebrated on Thursday. Indian railways have got woman drivers, and railway stations entirely maintained by women, but it's heartening that the Northeast Frontier Railway has entrusted the 20 women selected for the technician's team with the responsibility of fully maintaining the coaches, including safety aspects," said Sharma.

The Coach Maintenance Depot, Guwahati, has a coach-holding capacity of about 1,300. Its operations are spread across Kamakhya, Paltan Bazaar and New Guwahati, with a total of six pit lines and two sick lines comprising a staff of about 1,000 technicians.

Maintenance work at the ever-busy pit lines has been predominantly in the male domain. Workload in all three shifts requires the staff to go inside the dockpits. Women technicians, until now, were mostly engaged in ancillary maintenance works of the coaches, related to curtains repair and indication boards painting.

"To cater to the need for increasing maintenance capacity of the pit line in Guwahati, a project was taken up in the month of February to develop the maintenance gang with only women staff. Twenty women of technician grade were selected and were given classroom training on the various concepts of maintenance involved in a train in pit lines. After the theoretical training, the batch was given hands-on practical training at pit line with the existing technicians. Special focus has been given on the safety checking aspects of the trains," said Sharma.