The Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) denounces the direction of the Railway Board to continue re-engagement of the railway retired staff on contract basis as volunteers against the non-gazetted vacant posts in Pay level -1 to Pay level-9 and urges for the immediate recruitment against the vacancies.
The Railway Board letter dated 20th June 2025 in continuance of its letters dated 15th October 2024 and 31st December 2024 has said that re-engagement of retired staff against the non-gazetted vacant posts in Pay level-1 to Pay level-9 may be filled by calling the volunteers who retired from posts in the same cadre / category up-to three level higher than the post against which re-engagement is considered with a rider to give preference to the staff retired from the same pay level if found suitable.
This action of the Board instead of filling the total 2.5 to 3 lakh vacancies in Railways is a cruelty against the huge unemployed youth awaiting recruitment. The Modi Govt at the centre which promised 2 crores jobs per year a decade back before coming to power is pursuing this policy of furthering the precarious natured jobs which is worse than contract labour that too as volunteers by re-engaging the retired staff.
Besides, entire game plan of the Govt and the Railway ministry is to destructively restructure the composition of railway workforce to infuse barbarous precariousness, temporariness and rightlessness through such re-engagement of retired employees. It leads to massive contractualization and outsourcing of regular jobs including operational and safety-sensitive jobs. Thereby conspiring to severely curtail and curb the rights of the workers to collectively assert, bargain and act. The Railway unions must resist this and can only ignore such conspiratorial moves of the Railway management and the BJP led Govt only at their peril.
Further there are more than 6 lakh contract labour engaged by the railways with around 12 lakh regular employees in the Railways. Further while this sort of nefarious action is been pursued, the thousands of vacant sanctioned posts are also surrendered. These actions have led to severe staff shortage and huge work load on the existing employees. Staff shortage is also one of the reasons for the increasing train accidents during this period. Through this sort of decision, the Modi led Union Govt is playing with the lives of the passengers’ dependant on the railways for their commuting. The state of affairs has gone worse from bad as there are vacancies in lakhs with the biggest employer – Indian railways remaining unfilled, is facing acute shortage of staff and the crores of youth are in search of jobs in the nation.
CITU urges the Railway Board to immediately rescind the decision of re-engaging the retired staff and initiate recruitment process for the vacant posts to solve the problem of staff shortage without surrendering the sanctioned posts.
Issued by,
(TAPAN SEN)
General Secretary
