In a move aimed at waging a war against corruption, the Ministry of Railways on Friday launched “Mission Satyanishtha”, to sensitise its officials with ethics and probity in public life and motivate them to work without being corrupt. Union Minister Piyush Goyal administered the oath to the officers and supervisors at the programme held at the National Rail Museum. Railway Board chairman Ashwini lohani, Central Vigilance Commissioner KV Chowdry, former Cabinet Secretary Prabhat Kumar, former Higher Education Secretary Anil Swaroop and other senior officials were present on the occasion.
On this occasion, the officers took the oath to become honest and adhere to the ethics and maintain high standards of probity in their routine life. The programme will involve railwaymen attending formal training course on probity and integrity in public life. On this occasion, talks and lectures were organised in various offices of the railways across the country.
Speaking on the occasion, Union Minister Piyush Goyal said “People define an organisation and an organisation defines its people, hence, work culture has to be improved and transparency brought about, data should be displayed on public domains so as to get constructive feedbacks from the users”. He further added “lack of interest towards work in any system, may be termed as unethical amounting to corruption”.
Earlier in the day, lohani inaugurated the event. The event was webcast live to all Zonal, Divisional and Production Units from the National Rail Museum.
“The issue of ethics, integrity and probity in public life have been a matter of concern all over the Government sector. In this context it is also extremely important that all railway servants adhere to impeccable conduct and integrity at all times', said a press statement issued on the occasion.
As per CVC statistics released every year, maximum corruption complaints are always against railway employees. In the corruption watchdog's annual report for 2017 tabled in Parliament this year (2018), 12,089 complaints were against functionaries of the national transporter among the total 23,609 complaints received that year. Railways has also featured as one of the few organisations which went against CVC advice on individual cases of corruption as per the Prevention of Corruption Act.