The East Coast Railway Engineers’ Association (ECoREA) held its fifth annual general meeting here on Sunday with more than 200 members expressing their dissatisfactions over the negligence done by the Railway Ministry in fulfilling the engineers’ longstanding demands even though they play the main role for railway safety among all railway employees.
They criticised the policy of the Union Finance Ministry. They pointed out that the Railway Ministry sent a proposal to upgrade Senior Section Engineers by upgrading grade pay from Rs 4,600 to Rs 4,800 even though it should be Rs 5,400 (PB-3) at least at par with nurses, but the Finance Ministry turned it down citing that this grade exists in other Ministries and departments and agreeing to this proposal would have wide repercussions.
The engineers asked how then the Finance Ministry accepted the 6th Pay Commission report when grade pay for nurses was proposed at Rs 5,400 (PB-3).
They decided that if an early action is not taken then they may move court of law. All India Railway Engineers’ Federation secretary general AK Tyagi urged for Group-B status to all Junior Engineers and Senior Section Engineers at par with Junior Engineers of other Central Governments organisations.
A safety seminar on the role of engineers on efficient and safe operation of the railway system was also held. Principal Chief Engineer R Venkadsamy, Chief Mechanical Engineer Prem Chandra and Chief Electrical Engineer DN Jha were the guests, who said the engineers are the backbone of the railway system and they should be given the status according to their duties and responsibilities.
ECoREA president Sudhamaya Bajapayi presided over the seminar. ECoREA general secretary Bobin Mohanty said during his presentation that lack of awareness, bad road surface within level-crossings and lack of alertness are the reasons of the accidents. He proposed to keep more distance for blowing horns by train drivers and to provide horn recorder inside the engines for recording.
In the second presentation on safety of elephants, Gopal Nayak said political inactiveness, shrinking habitat, lure of tusks, etc., are the prime reasons of elephant deaths on rail tracks. In the last presentation, Kali Prasad Dash spoke on various reasons for railway accidents and also proposed remedies.
Elections were held for the years 2013 and 2014. Sudhamaya Bajapayi, Bobin Mohanty and SB Satapathy were elected as president, general secretary and finance secretary, respectively. BP Dash conducted both meeting and the seminar.