The government cannot hand over the assets made with the hard-earned money of people to handful of the capitalists. The income of Ambani, Adani has increased by many folds in this pandemic. How did the government let this happen? With the help of privatisation.
Main points of the speech of Shri Kanta Raju, General Secretary, All India Railway Track Maintainers Union (AIRTU) at the AIFAP monthly meeting 7 November 2021
I support AIFAP on behalf of AIRTU. Modi government is trying to privatise all public sectors. Last month they proposed to privatise track maintenance work in Northern Railway (NR). Track maintainer vacancies have not been filled and one trackman has to do the work of 10 trackmen because of this.
Track maintainers are sent for patrol work all alone. This is a physically and mentally exhausting work. 400 to 500 trackmen all over the country are run over every year and die. Even today one of our trackmen got run over. There are nearly 4 lakh train maintainers in the country. Through AIRTU India twitter id, we tweeted about this to the Prime Minister and Railway Minister and other authorities but none of them have cared to reply. People know about the soldiers dying for our country, but when a track maintainer dies, nobody cares. I am requesting AIFAP and other organisations to support us in raising the issue of trackmen being run over and save their lives.
On paper the government has promised many equipment to us such as shoes, raincoat, rakshak device, proper tools for working etc. but we are yet to receive them. I strongly oppose this and I am trying my best to get it implemented.
Majority of the people in the country are poor and privatisation is not going to help them in any manner. The government cannot hand over the assets made with the hard-earned money of people to handful of the capitalists. The income of Ambani, Adani has increased by many folds in this pandemic. How did the government let this happen? With the help of privatisation.
It is great that we have come up with AIFAP and many national federations have joined. Our Union opposes privatisation and fully supports AIFAP. With the help of this forum, we will get to know what the leaders of all the federations decide on national level to fight against privatisation. It is important to stop the entire public sector for one day.