Railway Board for total vaccination of staff by July-end

There were 250 mortalities among railway staff across the country

June 26, 2021 07:15 am | Updated 07:15 am IST - HYDERABAD

A vaccination camp organised by the South Central Railway in Secunderabad.

A vaccination camp organised by the South Central Railway in Secunderabad.

The Railway Board has instructed general managers of all the zones across the country to take necessary steps to vaccinate the entire railway workforce, including coolies, contract personnel and other stakeholders by July-end.

It has called for more vaccination camps to be set up to increase the pace of vaccination with those needing the second dose to be prioritised. Suitable rewards are to be given to zones and divisions having high vaccinate rates, low wastage and good practices.

However, that is easier said than done since the railways is totally dependent on the State governments for the supply of COVID vaccines and the latter too have been trying to vaccinate prioritised persons of varied age groups, though the supplies are likely to improve in the coming months. For instance, the South Central Railway (SCR) with about 2.5 lakh staff is dependent on the governments of Telangana (Hyderabad, Secunderabad divisions), Andhra Pradesh (Vijayawada, Guntur, Guntakal) and Maharashtra (Nanded) for vaccine dosages to be supplied, and personnel to be vaccinated.

Vaccination of frontline staff like loco-pilots, ticket checking staff, security personnel and others was the priority in the last three months. It was done in phases depending on the vaccine supply, informed senior officials, pleading anonymity.

Railway Board Chairman and CEO Suneet Sharma had informed earlier this month that about 6.5 lakh employees of 12 lakh got vaccinated and States were requested to provide the vaccines considering the important role railways is playing in movement of essential commodities and operating special passenger trains.

Within SCR, close to 20,000-odd frontline staff were vaccinated and many others took independent initiative to get vaccinated either in government or private healthcare centres during the April/May months of change in vaccines policy of procurement/supply, and subsequent shortage. There were also apprehensions about vaccine availability since 16,000 staff had tested corona positive since March last year and there were 250 mortalities among the working staff.

“In some divisions, we were able to vaccinate our employees helped by sufficient vaccine supply, like in AP,” they said. Vaccination camps have come up in Rail Nilayam apart from various divisions with the staff being told to get vaccinated, at the earliest. Thus far, 74,000 employees took the first dose and 20,000 the second dose with Covishield being the available vaccine. “No fee is being charged from the employees,” affirmed senior officials.

Reimbursement

Indian Railways has decided to reimburse the vaccination cost for the employees who had already taken the vaccine between June 9-21 in private hospitals at ₹780 per employee. This has been made applicable for only serving staff and the money will be credited into their respective salary accounts in July on submission of the vaccine certificate and payment receipt.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.