Hundreds of retired railway employees, including officers, re-engaged to fill huge vacancies across the network, may lose their jobs as the Ministry of Railways has decided to terminate their services considering partial attendance of 33% for operations during lockdown and age factor.
Southern Railway on Tuesday terminated 368 retired employees re-engaged in workshops. The notices were served through SMS/WhatsApp/email mode, official sources said.
In view of the partial attendance due to lockdown and also greater risk involved in the case of those above 60 years of age due to COVID-19, it is decided that the services of all the re-engaged retired staff of all workshops of Southern Railway are to be terminated duly, giving 15 days’ notice.
The 368 re-engaged staff were working in the Carriage Works, Perambur, Locoworks, Perambur, Signal & Telecommunication Workshop Podanur and Engineering Workshop, Arakkonam.
The status of other retired employees, including ex-servicemen, employed in different assignments will be known soon after the lockdown.
In May last year, the Railway Board cleared a proposal to engage ex-servicemen to fill up thousands of vacancies in safety categories across zones on contractual basis.
All India Railwaymen Federation national working president N. Kanniah said the decision to re-engage retired employees when several lakhs of young graduates were jobless was a wrong decision. Urgent steps should be taken to fill up the 1 lakh plus vacancies in various safety categories considering the fact that full-fledged passenger train operations commence post lockdown.