Railway Board Director-General, Signalling and Telecommunications, Akhil Agrawal asked probationers who would get trained on the field as Assistant S&T Officers from next week onwards, to constantly learn new technologies and keep themselves updated.
He addressed a gathering comprising 28 probationers on the Indian Railways Service Signalling Engineers (IRSSE) batch of 2014, including five women, at a passing out function in the Indian Railways Institute for Signal Engineering and Telecommunications (IRISET), a premier organisation here on Monday.
Mr. Agrawal said
said that 60 per cent of Indian Railways’ revenue went towards the ₹ 93,000 crore salary bill of the workforce that now numbered about 13 lakh. He stated that in 1980-81, the Indian Railways, with a workforce numbering about 17 lakh loaded only 200 million tonnes of freight while the freight figure was now about 1,100 million tonnes, even with lesser staff, but with improved efficiency and by leveraging technology.
Director-IRISET, L.N. Sinha underscored the need for the officers to imbibe ethical values and that together with honesty and integrity, they would become fine officers.
General Manager Vinod Kumar Yadav said the Indian Railways was the best organisation in the country and stressed that the initial five to six years would be the formative years of their service.
Probationary IRSSE officers Sudhanshu Mittal and Manish Kumar were adjudged the first and second best performers, while Vasu Handa was recognised as the best in sports.
Mr. Agrawal inaugurated renovated “Blue Bells” primary school run by IRISET Women’s Welfare Organization at Railway Colony, Mettuguda and flagged off a 32-seater bus, apart from unveiling a modern interactive white board with advanced teaching aids in one of the classrooms.
