Members of the South Western Railway Engineers’ Association (SWREA) staged a demonstration in the city on Friday demanding that the task force report on safety be implemented.
About 120 railway engineers comprising senior section engineers and junior engineers of all technical departments staged what they called “Mission Safety Dharna” under the banner of the SWREA. This was part of the nation-wide dharna conducted in front of all the divisional and zonal railway headquarters across the country by the All India Railway Engineers Federation.
The crux of the issue raised by the demonstrating engineers was that the authorities were not giving due importance to safety aspects and engineers cadre in the railways were demoralised. The association members said a graduate engineer, who joins the railways as senior section engineer, does not have a single assured promotion in their entire career as a result of which the railways was failing to attract the best of talents.
“Nurses, matrons and accounts staff were placed 2 to 3 grades above them in the pay scales,” said the association. It said that their counterparts in the PWD and other organisations have been upgraded to Group B, while engineers in the railways were placed in Group C. They said the strike would be intensified if their demand for restructuring the cadre with rectification of pay anomalies was not met.
