The East Coast Railway Engineers’ Association (ECoREA) on Tuesday threatened that railway engineers would go on mass leave and resort to agitations if their various demands, including Grade G status, are not met by the Railways Board soon.
“We will submit a memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Odisha visit on February 6 and 7. If our demands are not met still, we will follow “work to rule” and take mass leaves,” said ECoREA president Bobin Mohany at a Press conference here.
He said while the Junior Engineer (JE)/Senior Section Engineers (SSE) of Railways are directly involved in the safe and punctual running of train services, yet they have been neglected by the Railways since long.
The engineers have been demanding Group-B status, on par with their counterparts in other Central Government Departments as per Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) notification. Why the Railways cannot consider DoPT order to provide Group-B status to the JEs) and SSEs, he wanted to know. Around 80,000 diploma and degree engineers are working in the Indian Railways, he informed.
The engineers informed that they have submitted a 7-point charter of demands to the Government and would submit the same to the Prime Minister during his Odisha visit again.
The other demands are inclusion of railway staffs in new pension scheme, adequate safety measures during work hours, regularization of loco Inspectors appointed prior to January 1 2006, Rectification of MACI anomalies and absorption of Quasi Administrative Unit Staff against erstwhile group “D” vacancies.